7. Mattli, Walter - The Logic of Regional Integration Europe Beyond, Cap. 4

The Logic of Regional Integration Europe and Beyond Walter Mattli

4

Integration in Europe

1

Introduction

This chapter seeks to illustrate and test the analytical framework elaborated in the previous chapter on integration schemes from nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. It begins, in section 2, by examining one of the most successful examples of integration, the European Union. The section traces the EU's achievements to the existence of demand and supply conditions. First, demand conditions are examined through two examples chosen to illustrate the key role played by corporate actors in pressing for deeper integration: the constitutionalization of the Treaty of Rome and events leading up to the Single European Act. The section then turns to the enlargement issue and examines the conditions leading to acceptance or rejection of new potential members. Supply conditions are then considered. The section examines the role of two ``commitment institutions,'' the Commission and the European Court of Justice, in fostering integration, and Germany's critical contribution as institutional leader and regional paymaster to the successful collective supply of integration. The section concludes with a statistical test of the relationship between integration and investment ¯ows, adducing strong evidence of the ef®ciency view of integration. Section 3 provides a second test case of the analytical framework, namely the German Zollverein. Its structure is identical to that of section 2. The ®nal section turns to failed European integration schemes and asks whether they can be explained in terms of absence of demand and supply conditions. The main empirical focus of the section is on an attempt at integration from a largely neglected period of European commercial history: the `Ùnited States of Europe'' of the 1890s. 2

The European Union

The creation of the European Community is not easily captured by any simple theoretical argument. It appears as a phenomenon sui generis. 68

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The beginning of European integration is taken as given. The focus in this chapter is on the conditions that made the process of European integration a success, and on the external effects of community-building in Europe. It is commonly thought that the Community's main function is to preserve peace and security in Europe. After the Second World War, there was deep-seated opposition to restoring full sovereignty to West Germany ± a country blamed for aggression in 1870, 1914, and 1939. The policy-makers in the West, however, faced a quandary in the 1950s as the Cold War intensi®ed. The Soviet Union had just acquired the atomic bomb, Euro-communism was on the rise, and in 1950 the Korean War broke out. A strong Germany was essential for the security of the West. But would a revitalized Germany not pose a renewed political and military threat to its neighbors? To preempt this possibility, a new European institution needed to be created which could cement the economies of its member countries into an interdependent maze out of which independent aggressive action by a single country would be impossible. The Schuman Plan of 1950 constituted the ®rst step in this direction. It proposed to place the entire French and German coal-and-steel industry under a common High Authority and to abolish all tariffs restricting free exchange of coal-and-steel products. The treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) for ®fty years was signed in 1951 by France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, and Luxemburg. Its preamble stresses the concern for peace as the driving force of European integration. It reads: [The six governments] considering that world peace may be safeguarded only by creative efforts equal to the dangers which menace it; convinced that the contribution which an organized and vital Europe can bring to civilization is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations; . . . desirous of assisting through the expansion of their basic production in raising the standard of living and in furthering the works of peace; resolved to substitute for historic rivalries a fusion of their essential interests [and] to establish, by creating an economic community, the foundation of a broad and independent community among peoples long divided by bloody con¯icts . . . have decided to create a European Coal and Steel Community.1

Past plans designed to bring peace to Europe, however, have been many. These include the AbbeÂ de St. Pierre's Project of Perpetual Peace, Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi's Paneuropa, and Aristide Briand's projects in the 1920s and 1930s for a 1

Treaties Establishing the European Communities (Brussels: Of®ce for Of®cial Publications of the European Communities, 1987), my italics.

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lasting European peace. None came to fruition. The peace motive was insuf®cient to assure success for these plans. It may explain the establishment of the ECSC and has certainly helped European integration in the way suggested by Robert Jervis when he wrote that `èxpectations of peaceful relations were a necessary condition for the formation of the European Common Market . . . Had the Europeans thought there was a signi®cant chance that they would come to blows, they would not have permitted their economies to grow so interdependent.''2 Other motives were also important in accounting for the creation of European integration. Consider for example external developments. Europe, once the world's focus, found itself in danger of being eclipsed to the point of insigni®cance after the Second World War in a universe controlled by two superpowers. The Suez Crisis provided a particularly sobering demonstration of how limited the freedom of action of European states had become. `Ìt was felt that if Europe were to become something more than a footnote to history, the individual nations would have to combine their power and speak with a uni®ed voice.''3 The Spaak Report of 1956, which served as blueprint for the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Communities, contains the following nostalgic note in its foreword: `Èurope, which once had the monopoly of manufacturing industries and obtained important resources from its overseas possessions, today sees its external position weakened, its in¯uence declining and its capacity to progress lost in its divisions.''4 Even more revealing is the following statement by Walter Hallstein, ®rst President of the European Commission: `Ìt may be said in all frankness that an essential factor in the establishment of the European Economic Community has been egoism, European insistence on self-assertion . . . The old world has waked up; it is shaking off its feeling of second-rateness and is ready to play the game of world economics according to the rules of its traditional liberalism.''5 To restore its in¯uence in the world, Europe had to unite and create a ``third force'' between the two superpowers.6 2 3 4

5

6

Robert Jervis, ``The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past?,'' International Security 15, no. 3 (Winter 1990/1991), 51. Laurence Krause (ed.), The Common Market: Progress and Controversy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1964), p. 4. ComiteÂ Intergouvernemental CreÂe par la ConfeÂrence de Messine, Rapport des Chefs de DeÂleÂgation aux Ministres des Affaires EtrangeÁres (Brussels, SecreÂtariat, April 21, 1956), p. 9. Foreword by Walter Hallstein in Elizabeth Marting (ed.), The European Common Market: New Frontier for American Business (New York: American Management Association, 1958), pp. 12±13. This thinking was particularly prevalent in the writings of Jean Monnet, the proAmerican ``founding father'' of the European Community. See Sophie Meunier, ``The Paradox of Unity: European Integration and US-EC Trade Negotiations, 1958±1993,'' dissertation in progress (MIT, Department of Political Science).

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This reasoning applied not only to the political realm but particularly to trade relations. A united Europe was bound to be in a stronger bargaining position in trade negotiations. Pierre Uri, a longtime collaborator of Jean Monnet and presumed author7 of the economic sections of both the Schuman plan and the Spaak Report, acknowledged: We could not conceal the fact that one reason for setting up the Common Market was to enhance the bargaining power in tariff negotiations of all member countries taken together. It was all to the good that bargaining power of ``the Six'' would match the power of the United States in tariff negotiations and would make more likely the lowering of the US tariff which would be tradecreating. We should think, not in static terms, or of effects on paper, but of reality.8

The US role as security guarantor was a crucial factor in the beginning of European integration. The US presence in Europe contained Germany, giving the French suf®cient con®dence in their security to build a bilateral relationship with Germany, and allowed West European governments to avoid questions of West European foreign policy and defense by letting them be absorbed into the Atlantic Alliance under American leadership.9 Why, then, did the US support plans for European integration? There are three main reasons. First, it was thought that only a strong ally is a good ally. Economic integration would strengthen the United States' European partners and thereby improve the overall military position of the West vis-aÁ-vis the Soviet bloc. Second, Americans assumed that integration would produce economic growth in Europe and thus increase the demand for American products and investments. Third, the United States hoped that a prosperous and united Western Europe would accept a larger share of the common defense spending, increase its aid to developing countries, and take a more active role in solving international currency and commodity problems. `Às the members merge their economies and develop their capacity for acting as a unit, they will for the ®rst time be able to play the role of an equal partner . . . 7 8

9

See Richard Mayne, The Community of Europe (London: Victor Gollancz, 1962), p. 90 and p. 117. Pierre Uri made this statement during a conference of economists held in Lisbon in 1958. The proceedings of the conference are collected in E. A. G. Robinson (ed.), Economic Consequences of the Size of Nations (London: Macmillan, 1960), p. 430. For an excellent account of the effectiveness of the united European bargaining front during the Kennedy Round negotiations, see Thomas Zeiler, American Trade and Power in the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). William Wallace, Regional Integration: The West European Experience (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1994), p. 9.

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sharing equitably in the responsibilities and burdens which have hitherto rested mainly upon [the United States].''10 What emerged from this unique con¯uence of security, political, and economic motives was an ambitious blueprint for merging individual European economies into an `èver closer union.''11 The Treaty of Rome establishing the European Communities came into force on January 1, 1958. It committed the EC-Six (Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg) to a far-reaching exercise in economic integration which envisaged free movement of goods, services, capital, and labor, aided by common policies in agriculture, transport, regional development, external commerce, economic cohesion, and other domains. By the end of the transition period in 1969, the basic ingredients of the customs union ± elimination of internal tariffs and quotas and erection of a common external tariff ± were established. The member states agreed to deepen integration on two further occasions: in the mid-1980s by signing the Single European Act, and in the early 1990s by agreeing to the Maastricht Treaty on European Union. This chapter provides an illustration of the importance of the demand-side and supply-side factors of chapter 3 in explaining the process of European integration. The following sections consider, ®rst, the role of corporate actors in pushing legal integration through the constitutionalization of the Treaty of Rome and in bringing about the Single European Act; second, they examine supply conditions, particularly the role of Germany as the region's institutional leader. The demand for integration William Wallace, a perceptive student of European integration, has made a helpful distinction between formal and informal integration.12 Formal integration refers to the institutional framework established by the various treaties of European integration (Treaty of Rome, the Single European Act, and the Maastricht Treaty). It is by de®nition a discontinuous process, proceeding treaty by treaty. Informal integration, on the other hand, refers to the patterns of interactions and exchange triggered by the formal framework and ampli®ed by technological 10

11

12

Robert Bowie and Theodore Geiger, The European Economic Community and the United States, Report of the Subcommittee on Foreign Economic Policy of the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Of®ce, 1961), p. 12. Objective as stated in the preamble of the Treaty of Rome of 1957. See European Communities, Treaties Establishing the European Communities (Brussels: Of®ce for Of®cial Publications of the European Communities, 1978), p. 213. Wallace, Regional Integration.

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advance and market dynamics. Wallace argues that informal integration, in turn, ``creates pressures for further deepening of the formal structures of rules and institutions in order to manage their impact.''13 This idea is akin to the ``logic of demand'' elaborated in the previous chapter Corporate actors and pressure for legal integration A ®rst illustration of the demand logic is provided by the critical role played by private ®rms in bringing about legal integration in Europe, that is, in constitutionalizing the Treaty of Rome.14 This was the process by which the Treaty evolved from a set of legal arrangements binding upon sovereign states, into a vertically integrated legal regime conferring judicially enforceable rights and obligations on all legal persons and entities, public and private, within the European Union. This section focuses primarily on corporate actors, but it must not be overlooked that these actors were assisted by key ``commitment institutions'' on the supply side, notably the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Thus the section also illustrates the catalyzing effect on integration that may result when demand forces meet ``commitment institutions.'' These institutions will be more fully discussed in a later section.15 A quick perusal of the Treaty of Rome articles suggests that the founders intended the Court and its staff to interact primarily with other community organs and the member states. Articles 169 and 170 provide for claims of noncompliance with community obligations to be brought against member states by either the Commission or other member states. Article 173 gives the Court additional jurisdiction over a variety of actions brought against either the Commission or the Council by a member state, by the Commission, by the Council, or by speci®c individuals who have been subject to a Council or Commission decision directly addressed to them. Almost as an afterthought, Article 177 authorizes the Court to issue ``preliminary rulings'' on any question involving the intepretation of Community law arising in the national courts. Lower national courts can refer such questions to the ECJ at their discretion. In practice, the Article 177 procedure served as a channel of corporate pressure and demands for deeper integration. It established the framework for the constitutionalization of the Treaty by providing links 13 14

15

Ibid., p. 5. The section draws on Anne-Marie Burley and Walter Mattli, `Èurope Before the Court: A Political Theory of Legal Integration,'' International Organization 47 (1993), 41±76; and Walter Mattli and Anne-Marie Slaughter, ``Law and Politics in the European Union,'' International Organization 49 (1995), 183±190. See pp. 99±101 below.

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between the Court and subnational actors ± private litigants, their lawyers, and lower national courts. Referrals to the ECJ under Article 177 rely on the initiatives of private actors who deem governmental regulation incompatible either with existing Community rule or with the spirit of the Treaty of Rome. Without individual litigants, there would be no cases presented to national courts and thus no basis for legal integration. The various identities, motivations, and strategies of litigants have inevitably in¯uenced the nature and pace of integration. An early example of this in¯uence is provided by the famous Van Gend & Loos case of 1963. Through an Article 177 reference, a private Dutch importer raised the question whether he was entitled to invoke directly the common market provision of the Treaty of Rome against the Dutch government's attempt to impose customs duties on some of his imports from Germany.16 Over the explicit objections of the member states, the Court proclaimed that the Community constitutes a new legal order . . . for the bene®t of which the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited ®elds, and the subjects of which comprise not only member states but also their nationals . . . Community law therefore not only imposes obligations on individuals but it also intended to confer upon them rights which became part of their legal heritage.17

The effect of this case was that ®rms and private individuals who stood to gain from European integration could now push their governments, through the Article 177 procedure, to live up to paper commitments by pointing to Treaty provisions that supported an activity they wished to undertake; a national court would then certify the question of how Community law should be applied to the European Court of Justice, and if the Court's interpretation of a Treaty obligation implied a con¯ict between national law and Community law, national courts would have to set aside domestic rule. Another example of the importance of business in pushing legal integration is given by the role played by big French ®rms in forcing the Conseil d'Etat, the politically in¯uential supreme administrative court in France, to accept the judge-made doctrines of direct effect and supremacy of Community law.18 Until the beginning of the 1980s, the French Conseil d'Etat felt little pressure to endorse direct effect and 16 17 18

Case 26/62, N.V. Algemene Transport & Expeditie Onderneming Van Gend & Loos v. Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen, ECR, 1963, p. 1. Ibid., p.12, my italics. This section draws on Walter Mattli and Anne-Marie Slaughter, ``Revisiting the European Court of Justice,'' International Organization 52 (1998), 177±209. ``Direct effect'' means that EU law can confer on individuals legal rights that public authorities must respect and national courts protect. The supremacy doctrine states that in any con¯ict between community law and national law the former must be given primacy.

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supremacy. Two of its major partners, Germany and Italy, had supreme courts that refused to comply fully with the ECJ's jurisprudence. In 1984, however, the Italian Constitutional Court authorized lower national judges to declare national law incompatible with treaty obligations without having to refer the case to the Constitutional Court.19 The German Federal Constitutional Court announced in 1986, in the Solange II case, that it would no longer control the constitutionality of Community legal acts. The legal context in which corporate interests in France now found themselves put them increasingly at a competitive disadvantage relative to ®rms operating in member states where supremacy and direct effect doctrines were fully accepted. According to Jens PloÈtner, ``solid economic reasons [existed rendering] . . . full integration of Community law into French law paramount. How could the Project of 1992 become effective if the almost three hundred directives intended to transform it into legal reality were not to be directly enforced by the Conseil d'Etat?'' He adds: ``[T]he impossibility of referring to certain community regulations was bound to represent a serious economic disadvantage [to French ®rms] in comparison to their European competition. In the long run, this could have led to a movement of forum shopping, combined with some delocalization of head of®ces.''20 To remedy this situation, major import-oriented and export-oriented companies in France launched systematic attacks on government decisions that they felt were contrary to Community law. Their aim was to provoke a chain of verdicts by the ECJ condemning France for breach of Community law. This increased the pressure on the French government and the Conseil d'Etat to comply with Community rule. It is no coincidence that the decision by the Conseil d'Etat con®rming the direct effect of Community directives in France was initiated by Philip Morris and Rothmans, ®rms with suf®cient resources to engage in repeat litigation strategies.21 Richard Rawlings provides another account of the litigation strategy of corporate actors in the European context in his study on the Sunday 19 20

21

Italian Constitutional Court decision 170/84, Granital, [1984] CMLRev 756. Jens PloÈtner, The European Court and National Courts ± Doctrine and Jurisprudence: Legal Change in Its Social Context ± Report on France, Working Paper, RSC No. 95/28 (Florence: European University Institute, 1996), pp. 29 and 24. Ibid., 27. Reporting on the Netherlands, Claes and de Witte note similar pressures by Dutch business companies seeking to enforce in the early years of the Community the competition rules of the Treaty of Rome before national courts. See Monica Claes and Bruno de Witte, The European Court and National Courts ± Doctrine and Jurisprudence: Legal Change in Its Social Context ± Report on the Netherlands, Working Paper, RSC No. 95/26 (Florence: European University Institute, 1995), p. 7.

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trading saga, appropriately entitled The Eurolaw Game.22 At issue was the British Shops Act of 1950 that places statutory restrictions on Sunday trading. Large retailers used an Article 177 reference to the ECJ with the practical effect of freezing the enforcement of the national law. The economic incentive for such action is clear. For large retailers Sunday trading represents up to 23 percent of their turnover.23 The `Èuropean Defense'' put forth by the retailers stated that the Shops Act contravenes Article 30 of the EEC Treaty which prohibits ``quantitative restrictions on imports and all measures having equivalent effect.'' If a shop is prohibited from trading on a Sunday, they argued, its overall sales will be reduced; if sales are reduced, imports from the European Community will be reduced (by about 15 percent). Ergo the Shops Act amounts to a measure having equivalent effect to a quantitative restriction on imports within the meaning of Article 30.24 The Sunday trading saga ± too long and convoluted to be narrated here in full ± demonstrates the potential for the use of `Èuro-litigation'' strategies to achieve gains by powerful corporate interests. It contains a subplot that Rawlings calls ``the Multi-national Game.'' In this game, large British retailers were part of a coordinated Europe-wide litigation strategy by corporate interests in other member states that used Article 177 references almost simultaneously to intensify the pressure for abolition of restrictions on Sunday trading in their respective countries. Rawlings characterizes the Eurolaw game played in the Sunday trading saga in terms of out¯anking or ``trumping'' the domestic system.25 The importance of Article 177 as a channel of corporate pressure and demands for deeper integration has been con®rmed in a recent study by Alec Stone and James Caporaso. The study examines whether the pressure by private litigants for supranational rule increases as the number of cross-national transactions rises.26 The data set comprises 2,978 Article 177 references by national courts to the European Court of Justice. Strikingly, the authors ®nd that the relationship between references and intra-EU trade is nearly linear, with litigants in countries 22

23 24 26

Richard Rawlings, ``The Eurolaw Game: Some Deductions Form a Saga,'' Journal of Law and Society 20 (1993), 309±340. The term ``saga'' has been used in the legal literature to denote the situation where a single policy attracts litigation over a period of time through a series of attacks. Paul Diamond, ``Dishonorable Defences: The Use of Injunctions and the EEC treaty ± Case Study of the Shops Act 1950,'' The Modern Law Review 54 (1991), 72±87. 25 Ibid., 79. Ibid. Alec Stone and James Caporaso, From Free Trade to Supranational Polity: The European Court and Integration, Working Paper No. 2.45 (Berkeley: Center for German and European Studies, University of California, 1996); see also Alec Stone and Thomas Brunell, ``Constructing a Supranational Constitution: Dispute Resolution and Governance in the European Community,'' American Political Science Review, (forthcoming).

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that trade more with other EU countries generating higher levels of references. Second, Stone and Caporaso examine whether there is any relationship between these references and Community legislation (regulations and directives). They ®nd that the relationship is positive and signi®cant, suggesting that references lead to legislation.27 They conclude their study by noting, based on their evidence, that governments do not control the integration process in any determinative sense. Governments behave reactively rather than proactively. They act to ratify transfers of governing authority from the national to the supranational level that have already begun or to slow down the pace at which these transfers are made. In other words, this behavior can be seen as a response to subnational level demand for integration. Corporate pressure and the Single European Act The introduction of computers, microelectronics, ®bre optics, satellites, cable television, digital switches, lasers, electronic reproduction, and many other innovations deeply transformed the economy of Europe and the developed world in the 1970s and 1980s. The consequence of these advances has been, in a sense, to ``shrink'' distances and put pressure on governments to adjust the scale of political and economic organization to the level implied by the new technologies. Major manufacturers who began in those years to produce and market on a European rather than a nation-by-nation basis were confronted with burdensome obstacles: different national tax regimes that necessitated detailed paperwork and checks on fuel and goods at each frontier, resulting in lengthy border delays for trucks moving parts from plant to plant, and different regulations on axle weights, truck safety, vehicle exhaust emissions, and hours permitted behind the wheel.28 These impediments to free trade gave European big business, struggling to compete with their American and Japanese rivals, reason to think of ways to reduce the costs of producing and transacting in Europe. One solution promoted by big business was the completion of a truly single European market.29 To increase its clout in European economic affairs, a group of the largest and most in¯uential corporations, including Philips, Siemens, Olivetti, GEC, Daimler Benz, Volvo, Fiat, Bosch, ASEA, and Ciba-Geigy, formed the Round Table of European Industrialists in 27

28 29

More re®ned tests remain to be done. As the authors note, a further implication of their main proposition is that levels of integration are expected to vary across economic sectors, depending on the differential rates of transnational exchange. Wallace, Regional Integration p. 22. See also Jacques Pelkmans, Alan Winters, and Helen Wallace, Europe's Domestic Market (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 22. Sandholtz and Zysman, ``1992: Recasting the European Bargain,'' 116±120.

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1983.30 In one of their ®rst meetings, the members of ERT concluded that `ìn reality, despite ambitions to liberalize trade, and the measures taken by the EEC, Europe remains a group of separate national markets with separated national policies and separated industrial structures. This prevents many ®rms from reaching the scale necessary to resist pressure from non-European competitors.''31 The ERT urged political leaders to take the following policy steps:32 (1) revamp public policies to improve the risk/return relationship for European private investment ± for example, by allowing tax allowances for incremental research and development expenditures; (2) harmonize economic and monetary policies; (3) end subsidies to obsolete industries; (4) integrate the European market by allowing for the development of common standards; (5) promote the free ¯ow of people, information, and ideas; (6) facilitate the emergence of transnational industrial structures by eliminating ®scal impediments to mergers and restructuring and simplifying the transactions between parent companies and their subsidiaries; and (7) rede®ne EC regional and social policies. These demands were given voice through an effective lobbying campaign orchestrated by big business. Many ERT members had privileged access to key decision-makers in the member states. A member of the Delors cabinet declared: ``These men are very powerful and dynamic . . . when necessary they can ring up their own prime ministers and make their case.''33 For example, the Chief Executive Of®cers (CEOs) of Fiat and Philips, both leading investors in France, met several times with French President Mitterand to discuss the idea of a single European market and suggest speci®c policies to improve the health of the European economy. Some of these proposals eventually found entry into Mitterand's European industrial initiative. Cowles concludes that `ìn many respects, the French President's agenda . . . had been set for him by the ERT.''34 ERT members also lobbied the Commission.35 30

31 32 33 34 35

For an excellent study on the European Round Table, see Maria Green Cowles, ``The Politics of Big Business in the European Community: Setting the Agenda for a New Europe,'' PhD dissertation (Washington: The American University, Department of Political Science, 1994). See also Rob Van Tulder and Gerd Junne, European Multinationals in Core Technologies (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1988), pp. 214±216. Quoted in Maria Green Cowles, ``Setting the Agenda for a New Europe: The ERT and EC 1992,'' Journal of Common Market Studies 33 (December 1995), 506. Cowles, ``The Politics of Big Business,'' 219. Quoted in Van Tulder and Junne, European Multinationals in Core Technologies, p. 215. Cowles, ``Setting the Agenda for a New Europe,'' 513. See Axel Krause, ``Many Groups Lobby on Implementation of Market Plan,'' Europe ( July/August 1988), 24±25; Sonia Mazey and Jeremy Richardson (eds.), Lobbying in the European Community (Oxford University Press, 1993); R. Pedler and M. Van Schendelen (eds.), Lobbying the European Union: Companies, Trade Associations, and

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Ludlow notes: ``Business advocacy was . . . a central factor in propelling [the Single Market project] to the top of the Community's agenda, and in clarifying the range of measures involved and the need for a comprehensive, time-tabled strategy.''36 Lobbying at the Community level was relatively easy since the Commission had nothing to lose and much to gain from endorsing demands by business groups. In fact, senior Community of®cials regularly attended ERT business discussions. Delors himself explained: ``We count on business leaders for support.''37 Besides ERT, many other business groups lobbied the Commission. One was the Union of Industrial and Employer's Confederation in Europe (UNICE), which included over thirty industrial associations from throughout Europe.38 Its Secretary-General described the Union's lobbying as follows: ``Nine-tenths of our work comprises the regular, invisible interchange of ideas between our experts and the EC Commission's civil servants.''39 By all accounts, the lobbying effort of big business was effective. Businesses' success was helped by bad economic conditions. The European economies had suffered through more than ten years of industrial unrest and stag¯ation, and the economic recovery beginning in 1982±1983 was frail and slow.40 As argued in chapter 3, in times of economic dif®culties, the marginal value of integration in terms of the leaders' re-election chances is likely to be relatively high. Concerns about forgoing national sovereignty become of secondary importance to leaders intent on surviving politically. This allows leaders' dependence on big business to grow since this group's investment is of vital importance to economic recovery. Thus, the bargaining position of European big business was exceptionally strong in the ®rst half of the 1980s. Business could effectively threaten to move capital out of Europe if political action were not

36 37 38 39 40

Issue Groups (Brook®eld: Dartmouth Publishing Co., 1994); and Andrew McLaughlin, Grant Jordan, and William Maloney, ``Corporate Lobbying in the European Community,'' Journal of Common Market Studies 31 ( June 1993), 191±211. Peter Ludlow, Beyond 1992: Europe and Its Western Partners (Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies, 1989), p. 29. Quoted in Krause, ``Many Groups Lobby on Implementation of Market Plan,'' 24. Sandholtz and Zysman, ``1992: Recasting the European Bargain,'' 117. Quoted in Krause, ``Many Groups Lobby on Implementation of Market Plan,'' 24; see also Sandholtz and Zysman, ``1992: Recasting the European Bargain,'' 117. Japan and the United States performed in the same period considerably better than Europe. See Geoffrey Garrett, `Ìnternational Cooperation and Institutional Choice: The European Community's Internal Market,'' International Organization 46 (Spring 1992), 539. From 1974±1984, EC economic growth averaged 1.8% compared to 2.7% in the United States and 4.4% in Japan. See Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Economic Outlook: Historical Statistics. 1960±1985 (Paris: OECD, 1987).

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forthcoming. The following example serves as an illustration of this power: Wisse Dekker, the CEO of the Dutch multinational Philips, said in a speech that received front-page coverage in the Financial Times that if European political leaders failed to establish a single market ``there were not so many reasons why . . . Philips should stay in the Netherlands . . . I am European enough to wait until the last possible moment . . . [but] if Europe is neither able nor willing to develop its economic structure, then the consequences . . . must be drawn.''41 A few months later, just before the EC Council was to take the ®nal vote on the Single European Act, the CEOs of over thirty European ®rms sent the following remarkable telex to the Council members: As leading industrialists based in the European Communities . . . we urge you to exercise your full in¯uence so that the forthcoming top meeting . . . will produce concrete results. STOP. Not only is the credibility of European political leaders at stake but European industry badly needs a clear signal that the major objectives of the Treaty of Rome will be realised within the next 5 years. STOP. Even a clear statement that this would not be the case, would ± although not hoped for ± be helpful as this would end the prolonged period of uncertainty with which industry has to cope under the present situation and which forms a signi®cant obstacle on the way to expanding our activities and intensifying our efforts to build a strong and competitive European position.42

Even though it is impossible to assess ex post facto the exact historical importance of the telex, it is not farfetched to conclude that it served as a powerful reminder to political leaders of the dire ®nancial and economic consequences that a failure to accommodate the demands of big business for deeper integration might produce. The member states duly signed the Single European Act in February 1986. The enlargement issue Chapter 3 has argued that states which fail to adapt their governance structure adequately to the exigencies of new technologies will suffer economic damage for one or several of the following reasons. First, costsaving new production techniques requiring large markets are unlikely to be implemented in imperfectly integrated markets where they could only be operated below capacity. Second, ®rms in competitive industries will leave the jurisdiction of such states and settle where the institutional environment is most conducive to pro®table trade and investment. Third, foreign investors deciding whether to operate in the large and well-integrated market of a community country or the functionally 41 42

Jonathan Carr, ``Multinationals May Leave, If Europe Does Not Unite,'' Financial Times (25 April 1985), 1; quoted in Cowles, ``The Politics of Big Business'', 243. Quoted in Cowles, ``Setting the Agenda for a New Europe,'' 517.

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insuf®ciently integrated economy of a non-community country are likely to opt for the former, ceteris paribus. Finally, by remaining outside a union, states may also suffer the damage of trade diversion. If these external effects are strongly felt and the economies of outsiders decline markedly, elected of®cials, mindful of their re-election chances, are likely to change course and embrace pro-integration agendas. The reason is that the expected marginal value from integration in terms of the leaders' re-election chances (or, more broadly, the leaders' chances of retaining political power) is likely to increase as the economy declines. And as this value grows larger than the price of integration, rational outsiders will seek to become insiders. The following sections examine this proposition in detail. One immediately testable hypothesis deriving from this analytical framework suggests that a country seeks to integrate its economy only when there is a signi®cant positive cost of maintaining its present governance structure in terms of forgone growth (as measured by a continuing performance gap between it and a more integrated rival governance structure). This proposition is broadly supported by the data. Table 4.1 compares the timing of applications for membership in the EC with the evolution of growth rates for countries inside and outside the EC. The results show that out of twenty applications for membership by eleven countries, eighteen were submitted after one or ± more typically ± several years of growth rates mostly substantially below the average growth rates of EC countries.43 The empirical analysis shows more generally that there is no integration sought when there is no performance gap, and that a sustained 43

The average growth rate is based on the six founding countries of the European Community (EC-Six). For the second, third, and fourth enlargements, an average growth rate based on all present members yields essentially identical results. Data is from the IMF Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: 1984) for GDP data at constant prices for years 1957±1960; IMF Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: 1991) for GDP data at constant prices for years 1961±1990; Commission of the European Communities, Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs, European Economy: Annual Economic Report 1991±92 (Brussels: December 1991) for GDP data at constant prices for European Community countries during the years 1990±1991; and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Economic Outlook 51 (Paris: June 1992) for all other data for 1990±1992. The same calculations were done on economic growth data reported in the National Accounts by the OECD and in the Penn World Tables by Heston and Summers. (The Penn World Table [Mark 5.5] of 1993 is an updated [to 1990] and revised version of the original Table that was prepared for the article ``The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Explained Set of International Comparisons: 1950±1988'' by Alan Heston and Robert Summers, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1991.) The results based on the OECD and Penn World Table data are essentially identical to the ®ndings in Table 4.1 and thus are not reported here.

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Table 4.1. The timing of application for membership the European Community (based on IMF data) Country

Application Year of Growth-rate number application differential with EC (year prior to application with amount)

Number of years of below EC-6 growth rates (prior to application)

United Kingdom

First Second ``Third''

1961 1967 1970

Below (6.1%) 3 Below (1.5%) 3 Below (7.1%) 6

Above EC

Ireland


1961 1967 1970


Above EC

Denmark


1961 1967 1970


Below EC

Norway

First Second ``Third'' Fourth

1961 1967 1970 1992

Below (5.5%) Above (0.3%) Below (3.9%) Below (0.2%)

Sweden

First

1991

Below (2.7%) 3

Above EC

Switzerland

First

1992

Below (2.5%) 5

n/a

Finland

First

1992

Below (8.1%) 2

Above EC

Austria

First

1989

Below (0.2%) 3

[Same as EC]

Spain

First

1977

Below (1.9%) 1

Below EC

Portugal

First

1977

Above (2.0%) 0

Above EC

Greece

First

1975

Below (7.3%) 1

[Same as EC]

3 0 2 5

Growth-rate differential of country with EC-6 a year after membership

n/a

performance gap always eventually triggers demands for integration.44 Countries that fail to experience such a gap see no reason to pay the price of integration and thus stay out. However, as discussed below in detail, there is one interesting exception to the rule that countries seek membership if there is a performance gap: Europe's neutral countries failed to seek full EC membership in moments of relative economic decline during the Cold War. After the Cold War ended, they too opted to pursue full integration. Finally, another regularity is that growth-rate differentials tend to be mostly above the EC average during the ®rst year of membership. Growth rates for advanced newcomers then tend to 44

For extensive statistical evidence, see Walter Mattli, ``The Logic of Regional Integration,'' PhD thesis, University of Chicago (1994).

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¯uctuate around the Community average, while they typically remain higher for poorer countries during the ®rst few years. As suggested in the concluding section, such trends are linked to bene®cial investment in¯ows following membership. The countries of the ®rst enlargement of the EU The Treaty of Rome establishing the European Communities came into force on January 1, 1958. As brie¯y outlined above, it committed the EC-Six (Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg) to a far-reaching exercise in economic integration which envisages free movement of goods, services, capital, and labor, aided by common policies in agriculture, transport, regional development, external commerce, research and development, economic cohesion, education, environment, and other domains. Most other Western European countries which were not part of the EEC ± the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, and Portugal ± at ®rst reacted to the formation of the European Community by establishing the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) on January 4, 1960. Finland signed an association agreement with EFTA in 1961. This rival organization with a minimalist integrative program committed its members to establishing free trade in industrial goods only. To foreign investors, the European Community was more attractive than EFTA. The percentage of the value of US direct investment in Western Europe which was apportioned to Community countries rose from 40.5 percent in 1957 to 44.7 percent in 1964. Yannopoulous relates this increase to a diversion of the ¯ow of US investment from the non-EC countries of Western Europe, particularly the United Kingdom, to members of the Community.45 Numerous other studies have likewise concluded that the EC attracted signi®cantly more of the growth in total US foreign direct investment than EFTA countries (see table 4.2.).46 This investment diversion undoubtedly contributed to the UK's 45

46

George Yannopoulos, ``Foreign Direct Investment and European Integration: The Evidence from the Formative Years of the European Community,'' Journal of Common Market Studies 28 (March 1990), 236. Andrew Schmitz, ``The Impact of Trade Blocs on Foreign Direct Investment,'' Economic Journal 80 (1970), 724±731; Andrew Schmitz and Jurg Bieri, `ÈEC Tariffs and US Direct Investment,'' European Economic Review 3 (1972), 259±270; John Lunn, ``Determinants of US Direct Investment in the EEC: Further Evidence,'' European Economic Review 13 ( January 1980), 93±101 and ``Determinants of US Direct Investment in the EEC: Revisited Again,'' European Economic Review 21 ( January 1983), 391±393; Anthony Scaperlanda and Robert Balough, ``Determinants of US Direct Investment in the EEC: Revisited,'' European Economic Review 21 (May 1983), 381±390. For a useful review of the empirical studies, see Yannopoulos, ``Foreign Direct Investment and European Integration,'' especially 238±247.

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Table 4.2. Flows of US direct investment to Western Europe (%) Western Europe European Community (EC) countries European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries

1950

1957

1964

100

100

100

45.6

36.5

50.5

48.9

59.7

44.1

Source: Yannopoulos, ``Foreign Direct Investment and European Integration,'' 237.

worsening economic condition. The UK grew in the late 1950s and early 1960s well below the Community average. To stem economic losses, the United Kingdom formally announced in 1961 that it had decided to apply for full membership in the EC. It was soon followed by Ireland, Denmark, and Norway. Subsequently, Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland made separate applications for association. Negotiations regarding the British application dragged on until January 13, 1963, when General de Gaulle declared at a Paris press conference that Britain was not ripe for membership. Two weeks later, all negotiations were adjourned inde®nitely. At that time, talks with Norway and Denmark were advanced. Formal negotiations on the Irish application had hardly begun. In the case of the three applicants for association ± Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland ± a ®rst round of talks had taken place between the EC Commission and a delegation from the countries concerned, to ascertain the problems to be addressed. But no formal negotiations had been opened.47 Continuing poor economic performance relative to that of the EC-Six led the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, to announce in May 1967 that the United Kingdom had decided to submit its second application.48 Ireland, Denmark, and Norway followed suit. Negotiations were immediately initiated, but only a few months later de Gaulle, in one of his famous press conferences, declared that full membership for Britain would lead to the destruction of the Community. This closed the door to entry yet again. Events in May 1968 led to the resignation of de Gaulle, and under President Pompidou France no longer objected in 47 48

Dennis Swann, The Economics of the Common Market (London: Penguin Group, 6th edn, 1988), p. 24. For a lucid study on the economic performance gap between the EC-Six and the EFTA countries, see Fritz Breuss, Integration in Europa and gesamtwirtschaftliche Entwicklung: EG- und EFTA-Staaten im Vergleich (Vienna: Oesterreichisches Institut fuÈr Wirtschaftsforschung, 1990).

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principle to British membership. The United Kingdom, along with the three other applicants, was invited back to the negotiating table.49 The United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark continued to grow at rates substantially below the Community average after the resumption of talks. This trend narrowed or reverted only as the three acceded to membership in 1973. Norway's planned membership in the Community was vetoed by a national referendum held in October 1972. Why? Norway was the only country of four applicants where the performance gap of the years 1968±1970 had completely disappeared in 1971±1972, thus possibly giving Norwegians the impression that membership was no longer worth the candle. This is not a farfetched conclusion considering that membership not only entails a relative loss of sovereignty but also usually net contributions to the Community's budget by wealthy members.50 The reversal of Norway's economic fortune can be attributed to a stroke of good luck. In 1969, the ®rst commercially important discovery of petroleum on Norway's continental shelf was made at the Eko®sk ®eld, just as foreign oil companies were about to give up after four years of exploratory drilling. Later major ®nds have included the Frigg ®eld, one of the largest offshore natural gas deposits, and the huge Statfjord ®eld. The estimated reserves below the 62nd parallel alone ensured an annual production for twenty years that is several times Norway's domestic consumption of petroleum products.51 In the mid-1980s, times changed for the worse in Norway. World crude-oil prices fell to $8 a barrel in 1985±1986, delivering a severe blow to Norway's economy from which it took a long time to recover. The reduction in petroleum revenue slashed Norway's spendable real income by 9 percent. By the late 1980s registered unemployment climbed to nearly 6 percent, the highest suffered in Norway for over sixty years.52 Consistent with the framework of chapter 3, Norway announced in November 1992 its intention to seek membership of the EC. At the last minute, however, Norway opted to stay out, as it had done in 1972, when a majority of Norwegians voted against EU membership in 49

50

51 52

Table 4.1 records this as application ``Third.'' Formally, however, no new applications were submitted. For an overview of this enlargement process, see Christopher Preston, Enlargement and Integration (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 23±45. Christopher Anderson and Shawn Reichert write: ``[P]ublics in . . . member states . . . that are considering membership . . . will be more reluctant to support integration if they will be net payers.'' See C. Anderson and S. Reichert, `Èconomic Bene®ts and Support for Membership in the EU: A Cross-National Analysis,'' Journal of Public Policy 15 (1995), 246. See country report on Norway in the Encylopaedia Britannica (Macropaedia) (1992), pp. 1082±1096. See survey on Norway in Financial Times, June 2, 1992, Section IV.

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November 1994. Most analysts have explained Norway's latest rejection in terms of successful coalescing of rural interests, nationalists, leftists, and environmentalists. This, however, does not explain why this coalition succeeded in 1994 while only a few years earlier, during the height of the recession, its views had been marginal. The conventional explanation would bene®t from a reference to the development of differential growth rates between the EU and Norway, as suggested in this analysis. By the early 1990s oil prices had recovered from their mid-1980s' slump and they quickly propelled the Norwegian economy out of the recession. In 1994, the year of the referendum, Norway's real GDP growth was a remarkable 5.7 percent, a rate well above the EU average. Oil revenues were largely responsible for Norway's relative economic strength.53 Predictions were that the North Sea petroleum bounty would continue to buoy the economy for a number of years.54 For Norway, membership of the EU had once again lost its urgency. Moses and Jenssen conclude that `òil incomes have become a determinative factor in in¯uencing Norwegian attitudes on membership . . . Norwegians apparently feel that they can afford to remain outside the Union.''55 Europe's neutral countries and enlargement Prima facie, the data on Europe's neutral countries seem to contradict our explanation, at least partially. Austria, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland submitted or announced the intention to submit applications only between 1989 and 1992, after several years of growth rates continually below the Community average. Why did they fail to apply during earlier periods of widening performance gaps? There are two parts to the answer. First, while it is true that these four EFTA countries did not seek application until the late 1980s and early 1990s, they nevertheless repeatedly sought closer ties with the Community. For example, when the United Kingdom and Denmark decided to leave EFTA in 1972, the remaining members negotiated free-trade agreements (FTAs) in industrial goods with the EC. The FTAs with Austria, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland came into force on January 1, 1973, with Iceland in April 1973, and with Norway in July 1973.56 A joint EC±EFTA ministerial meeting in 53

54 55 56

Jonathon Moses and Anders Todal Jenssen, ``Nordic Accession: An Analysis of the EU Referendums,'' in Barry Eichengreen and Jeffry Frieden (eds.), Forging an Integrated Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 211±246. See special report on Norway in Financial Times (November 20, 1995), 1±4. Moses and Jenssen, ``Nordic Accession: An Analysis of the EU Referendums,'' 222. See Finn Laursen, ``The Community's Policy Towards EFTA: Regime Formation in the European Economic Space (EES),'' Journal of Common Market Studies 28 (1990), 311.

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Luxemburg on April 9, 1984, produced a declaration which sought to continue, deepen and extend cooperation between the EC and the EFTA with the aim of creating a dynamic European Economic Area (EEA).57 The dialogue on the EEA intensi®ed and in 1992 a treaty signed by the two organizations established a European free-trade zone in goods, services, labor, and capital. The EEA came into force on January 1, 1994.58 While not, therefore, of®cially applying for EC membership, the EFTA countries clearly demonstrated a recognition of the bene®ts of association with the dynamic regional grouping. Another policy to narrow the institutional gap between insiders and outsiders, short of membership, is policy mimicry. Europe's neutral countries have repeatedly adopted norms and policies forged outside their jurisdiction to avoid economic marginalization. For instance, in 1988 the Swiss government introduced the so-called `Èurope Clause'' requiring all proposed legislation or amendments to be examined for compatibility with Community rule.59 In 1993 the Swiss government announced plans to press ahead on harmonizing of its laws and regulations with those of the Community, even though it did not consider membership.60 In the same year, Switzerland introduced a value-added tax as a further step to align its ®scal and economic policies with those of the European countries. In Norway, steps were taken as early as 1987 to create a new Secretariat in the Foreign Ministry, together with a Committee of Permanent Secretaries, in order to ensure better coordination of European policies. These agencies scrutinize all new Community directives and seek to involve a wider range of bodies in European affairs. Legislative adaptation proceeded on a wide scale in various ministries, in close consultation with export industries, labor and employers' organizations, and other interest groups.61 In Sweden, an extraordinary decree was adopted by the government in June 1988 that required every expert inquiry or Royal Commission proposing a policy in ®elds related to the internal market or European integration to evaluate the policy's compatibility with corresponding EC legislation and EC Commission proposals. The burden of proof of compatibility rested on the proposer and every proposal that diverged 57 58 59 60 61

See Philippe Nell, `ÈFTA in the 1990s: The Search for a New Identity,'' Journal of Common Market Studies 28 ( June 1990), 327±358. In a referendum held in December 1992, Switzerland rejected the EEA by a narrow majority. Richard Senti, ``Switzerland,'' in Helen Wallace (ed.), The Wider Western Europe: Reshaping the EC/EFTA Relationship (London: Pinter Publishers, 1991), p. 220. Bericht uÈber die Aussenpolitik der Schweiz in den 1990er Jahren (Bern: Bundesrat, November 1993). Martin Saeter and Olav Knudsen, ``Norway,'' in Wallace (ed.), The Wider Western Europe, 189.

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from Community legislation had to be justi®ed. EC compatibility also needed to be considered in the judicial review of government bills.62 Furthermore, a secretariat for integration questions was established, which was responsible for internal adjustments and the implementation of domestic integration policy.63 Sweden unilaterally adopted and implemented more than twenty directives by the end of 1989. At the same time, it enlarged its value-added tax base in line with that of the Community, changed its somewhat restrictive banking and currency laws, and undertook some deregulation.64 In the monetary domain, acts of mimicry are also quite common. For example, in the 1980s and early 1990s Austria, Switzerland, and Sweden were not members of the European Monetary System (EMS), yet their respective central banks pegged their currencies to the Deutschmark, the EMS's anchor currency.65 In short, even before seeking formal membership Europe's neutral countries went a long way down the road of unilateral adaptation to EC law and policies to avoid being effectively left out. Their national sovereignty remained intact de jure, but de facto it had lost much of its value.66 A second reason why these countries have been more reluctant than other West European states to seek full membership of the EU is that neutrality during the Cold War may well have served them better than membership. This is perhaps most apparent in the Finnish case. For Finland, which shares a 780-mile border with Russia, neutrality was not 62 63 64 65

66

Carl-Einar Stalvant and Carl Hamilton, ``Sweden,'' in Wallace (ed.), The Wider Western Europe, p. 203. Ibid., p. 202. Finland also followed the beat of legislative calibration to Community norms. See Esko Antola, ``Finland,'' in Wallace (ed.), The Wider Western Europe, pp. 146±158. A Swedish diplomat was quoted in the Washington Post as saying: ``How long can anyone remain ìndependent' vis-aÁ-vis a decision by the Bundesbank to change the interest rate or the value of the German Mark? About 20 minutes?'' Quoted in an article by Jim Hoagland, `À Bogeyman Theory of Government,'' Washington Post ( June 2, 1992). Philippe Nell, `ÈFTA in the 1990s,'' 352. An interesting example of the logic of policy mimicry in a different historical era can be found in Hendrik Spruyt, `Ìnstitutional Selection in International Relations: State Anarchy as Order,'' International Organization 48 (Autumn 1994), 527±557. Spruyt writes that ``sovereign states proved better at mobilizing their societies and enhancing their domestic economies [than the cities of the Hanseatic league]. Territorial units gradually encroached on the independence of the cities . . . The German princes thus started to mimic the administrative processes and legal framework of territorial states . . . When political elites recognized the consequences of localism and the lack of economic integration in their city-states, they turned to the territorial rules of Frederick and Catherine the Great as models worthy of emulation . . . [I]ndividuals had reasons to mimic those successful institutions . . . [They] emulated what they perceived to be successful arrangements in order to reduce uncertainty and gain legitimacy'' (ibid., 546 and 550, my italics).

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only a political imperative but also above all an economic advantage, permitting it to maintain steady and pro®table trade relations with Moscow. The loss of economic bene®ts due to the collapse of the Soviet Union contributed to Finland's deepest recession since the 1930s.67 As a result, Finland no longer felt any compunction about betraying its principle of neutrality. Its application to the EC contained no reference to preserving neutrality as a precondition to membership. While Europe's neutral countries failed to seek full EC membership in moments of relative economic decline during the Cold War, they too sought membership after the Cold War ended. Despite rapid progress towards a European Economic Area and despite sweeping policy mimicry, the neutral countries were unable to reverse relative economic decline in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Corporate pressure on governments to move towards full membership grew intense in those years. Big ®rms became increasingly discontented with the uncertainty and lack of transparency of many of the measures taken by their governments to bridge the institutional gap with the EU. They argued that such measures did not provide conditions favorable enough to compete successfully with the big ®rms within the common market. In particular, they felt that their governments could not commit themselves to implement EC policies as credibly as EC governments.68 This created lingering doubts about the comprehensiveness and thoroughness of policy mimicry and also made outsiders vulnerable to discriminatory treatment by the EC in several domains, such as research and development and public procurement. As a result, multinationals in outsider countries began to invest more and more of their resources away from home, within the EC. This enabled them to lower production costs and get a stronger foothold in the European market.69 In Sweden, for example, the result of this process was a striking gap between outward investment and inward investment in the late 1980s (see ®gure 4.1). Disinvestment of such magnitude came at a particularly inopportune 67

68 69

Real output declined by 10 percent over 1991 and 1992 and was ¯at in 1993. Unemployment reached 20 percent. The banking sector lurched into losses so severe that the state had to spend some 60 billion markkas to bail it out. The budget de®cit ballooned to around 10 percent of gross domestic product and foreign debt doubled to almost 50 percent of GDP. Finally, the value of the Finnish markka fell by 50 percent between 1991 and the end of 1992. See Financial Times, special survey on Finland (October 11, 1993), 2. Carl-Einar Stalvant and Carl Hamilton, ``Sweden,'' in Wallace (ed.), The Wider Western Europe, p. 208. Karl-Orfeo Fioretos, ``The Anatomy of Autonomy: Interdependence, Domestic Balances of Power, and European Integration,'' Review of International Studies 23 (1997), 312.

90

Integration in Europe 100,000

Millions of SKr

80,000

Total inward investment Total outward investment

60,000

40,000

20,000

0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 Year Figure 4.1 Inward and outward investment in Sweden. Source: Karl-Orfeo Fioretos, ``The Anatomy of Autonomy: Interdependence, Domestic Balances of Power and European Integration,'' Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), 312.

time. Sweden was grappling with its most severe recession since the 1920s.70 The recovery package that the government had designed was to a large extent dependent on retaining Swedish companies. In dire need of improving the investment climate, the Swedish government was left with no option but to apply for full EC membership. Even after the application was ®led in 1991, Swedish ®rms kept pressing government of®cials for rapid membership negotiations, repeatedly issuing explicit threats of exit.71 Fioretos concludes unequivocally: ``The engine of Sweden's integration . . . has been its large multinational corporations . . . The Swedish government had little option but to secure access for Swedish ®rms to the Union if it was to retain domestic investment, 70 71

Sweden's economy declined by 1.2 percent in 1991 and 1 percent in 1992. Moses and Jenssen, ``Nordic Accession: An Analysis of the EU Referendums,'' 217. The two authors also note that in public-opinion polls conducted in the run-up to the referendum, a majority of Swedes thought that EU membership would improve domestic economic fortunes. In contrast, only 28 percent of Norwegians felt that membership would be an advantage to Norway's economy.

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promote growth and employment, as well as make Sweden an attractive site for foreign investment in the future.''72 The Austrian case is similar to the Swedish one, and thus ®ts well the general logic of the ®rst integrative response elaborated in the previous chapter. In a recent case study, Tim BuÈthe summarizes the key motives of Austrian membership application as follows: `Àustria ± ®rst some of its ®rms, eventually its government on behalf of Austria's economic growth perspective ± had sought EC membership to ensure access to the EC market for Austrian exports and . . . to ensure competitiveness.''73 The membership issue was ®rst brought up in Austria by exportoriented ®rms in the mid-1980s, during the period of negotiations for the Single European Act. The textile industry of Vorarlberg in western Austria felt increasing discrimination from the EC, despite free-trade agreements.74 The Federation of Austrian Industrialists was the ®rst important interest group to endorse the demands for EC membership made by the textile industry. In 1987 it issued an `ùrgent appeal to the Federal Government to do everything so that full membership in the EC can be accomplished at the earliest possible moment.''75 The idea of membership was also endorsed by the Federal Chamber of Commerce and quickly enjoyed widespread popularity. Such positive public response is best understood against the backdrop of an Austrian economy in distress. Paul Luif notes: In November 1985, Austria's large state-owned industry was on the brink of bankruptcy and the federal government had to come to the rescue, but the already high budget set limits for such intervention. The nationalized industry had to abandon one of its most cherished policies and to dismiss workers and employees on what was, for Austria, a massive scale. These problems were only one indication of the precarious state of the Austrian economy, which in the mid-1980s was growing more slowly than . . . the EC economies taken as a whole.76 72 73

74 75

76

Fioretos, ``The Anatomy of Autonomy,'' 313. Tim BuÈthe, European Union and National Electorates: The Austrian Public Debate and Referendum on Joining the European Union in June 1994, Working Paper 5.8 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, Center for European Studies, July 1995), p. 22. Paul Luif, `Àustria,'' in Wallace (ed.), The Wider Western Europe, p. 135. Vereinigung Oesterreichischer Industrieller, `Èuropa ± unsere Zukunft. Eine Stellungnahme der Vereinigung Oesterreichischer Industrieller zur EuropaÈischen Integration'' (Vienna, May 1987), 46; quoted in Luif, `Àustria,'' p. 129. Note that most of Austria's trade has always been with Community members. In 1985, for example, the EC countries received a 56.1 percent share of Austrian total exports whereas the EFTA countries got only 10.5 percent. At the same time, Austria imported 62.1 percent of goods from the EC and only 7.6 percent from EFTA countries. See International Monetary Fund, Directions of Trade (Washington D.C.: IMF), various issues. Luif, `Àustria,'' p. 135.

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On July 17, 1989, Austria submitted its EC application to the Commission ± an application that had been authorized by a 95 percent majority of the lower chamber of the Austrian Parliament.77 Like big ®rms in Sweden, ®rms in Austria strongly preferred full EC membership to membership of the EEA.78 They felt that EEA membership alone would neither provide suf®cient guarantee against EC discrimination nor create the right investment climate. BuÈthe notes, for example, that investments in Austria which were ®nanced on international capital markets in 1994 still cost a premium over investments in the EU, despite Austrian membership in the EEA.79 Only EC membership seemed to offer big Austrian business the necessary safeguards and advantages to compete effectively with EC ®rms. The more general expected gains from full membership on Austria were illustrated in a series of in¯uential studies published in the early 1990s by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research. The studies predicted that GDP would be 2.8 percent higher by the year 2000 if Austria were a full EU member instead of simply belonging to the EEA.80 Persuaded by such arguments, two-thirds of Austria's voters endorsed EU membership in a 1994 referendum. The strong vote in favor of membership was possibly in¯uenced by renewed economic dif®culties in the early 1990s. Austria's recession peaked in 1993 when GDP declined by about 0.25 percent. Along with Sweden and Finland, Austria joined the European Union on January 1, 1995. Finally, the Swiss case is, in parts, consistent with the ®rst integrative response logic of chapter 3. Swiss economic growth fell signi®cantly below average Community growth in the late 1980s. In late 1990, Switzerland entered into a recession that lasted for around three years.81 At the same time, internationalized sectors of the Swiss economy, most notably the engineering and chemical industries, began to lobby for EU membership. In 1988, engineering exports represented 28.3 percent of total Swiss exports to the EC market. Products by the chemical industry accounted for 21.4 percent of total Swiss exports to the EC.82 These 77 78 79 80 81 82

BuÈthe, European Union and National Electorates, p. 7. See Paulette Kurzer, Business and Banking: Political Change and Economic Integration in Western Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). BuÈthe, European Union and National Electorates, p. 23. Sven Arndt, `Àlpine Contrasts: Swiss and Austrian Responses to the EU,'' in Eichengreen and Frieden (eds.), Forging an Integrated Europe, pp. 260±261. The Swiss economy started to move back into growth in the last quarter of 1993. The jobless rate rose during the recession to over 5 percent Kristina Plavsak, ``Why Do Small States Want to Join European Integration? Responses of Austria, Norway, and Switzerland to the EC Challenge,'' unpublished paper (New York: Columbia University, Department of Political Science, May 1996), 32.

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industries were expressing concern about negative externalities from the deepening process of European integration, particularly in the form of discrimination in the areas of technical harmonization, public procurement, and research and development. In light of growing economic unrest, the Swiss government declared its intention to seek EU membership in October 1991. It sent a formal application to the Community on May 18, 1992. How did it justify such a move, considering the ``sacredness'' of Swiss neutrality? In a 1993 foreign policy report, the Swiss government explained that neutrality had never been an end in itself but merely a means of preserving Swiss independence. In the post-Cold War world, Swiss independence was threatened more by not having a say in EU matters than by any hostile military power. Prosperity through integration became the declared objective of Swiss foreign policy.83 Considering all of these factors (economically troubled times, corporate pressure for EU membership, willingness by political leaders to accommodate these demands), the political-economy approach of chapter 3 would predict in the Swiss case a smooth move towards membership. Instead, in December 1992, 50.3 percent of Swiss voters opposed EEA membership as against 49.7 percent in favours, thus in effect barring any further talks on EU membership. The economic cost of the ``no'' vote was estimated to be high. Several studies suggested that by not joining the EEA, investments in Switzerland would grow at only 0.5 percent instead of 3.5 percent. As a result, GNP would rise by less than 1 percent compared to 2.3 percent, and unemployment would double.84 Considering the continuing economic dif®culties of the Swiss economy in the wake of the ``no'' vote, many of these estimates seem to have been validated.85 Why this negative vote? The approach of chapter 3 cannot explain it. This need not imply that the approach is wrong. First, many of the dynamics leading up to the referendum were well captured by the approach; further, the outcome of the referendum was extremely tight, thus hardly an outcome that convincingly ``falsi®es'' the approach. Nevertheless, it does suggest that, at least in the Swiss case, the politicaleconomy approach is analytically incomplete. But the approach remains 83 84

85

Bericht uÈber die Aussenpolitik der Schweiz in den 1990er Jahren (Berne: Bundesrat, November 1993). Rene Schwok, ``Switzerland: The European Union's Self-appointed Pariah,'' in John Redmond (ed.), Prospective Europeans: New Members for the European Union (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), p. 34. See William Hall, ``Switzerland: Isolation Is Now Being Questioned,'' Financial Times, survey (March 1997), 27.

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useful because it provides a benchmark by which to assess the extent and impact of non-economic motivations in deciding for or against integration. It thus suggests that a more ®ne-grained analysis is needed in the Swiss case, that takes into consideration factors such as the country's socio-political characteristics, or elements that capture the peculiarity of Swiss political decision-making.86 The remaining countries Spain was virtually a closed economy under Franco's dictatorship, and up to 1970 it established trading links neither with EFTA nor with the EC. In 1970 it began a trade agreement with the EC which reduced tariffs, with some exceptions for sensitive products and with a slower pace for dismantling tariffs on the Spanish side. In July of 1977, the Suarez government submitted its application to the EC. Spain became a full member on January 1, 1986. Portugal began to consider membership in the EC upon restoration of full democracy after the departure of Caetano in 1974. An application was ®led in March of 1977 and the country joined simultaneously with Spain.87 The relationship between Greece and the Community goes back to the 1960s. A Treaty of Association came into operation in 1962 and provided for the eventual formation of a customs union between Greece and the Six. Following the coup d'eÂtat in 1967, the Greek association agreement was frozen, but it was reactivated in 1974 with the restoration of democracy. In June 1975 the Karamanlis government submitted an application to the EC. Greece became a full member on January 1, 1981.88 The data on economic growth for Spain, Portugal, and Greece show some correlation between economic slowdown and the timing of their application for membership. The evidence of a link between economic performance and timing, however, is considerably weaker for these three countries than for most other countries in the sample. This is not surprising. As noted in chapter 3, a test of the timing hypothesis is only meaningful for countries that are generally viewed by a union as desirable prospective members. These are typically countries within the region that are at a comparable level of socio-economic development. Countries that are signi®cantly poorer than even the least wealthy 86

87 88

See, for example, Pascal Sciarini and Ola Listhaug, ``Single Case or a Unique Pair? The Swiss and Norwegian `No' to Europe,'' Journal of Common Market Studies 35 (September 1997), 407±437. For an overview of the EC's third enlargement, see Preston, Enlargement and Integration in the European Union, pp. 62±86. For further reading, see G. N. Yannopoulos (ed.), Greece and the EEC (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986); and Preston, Enlargement and Integration in the European Union, pp. 46±61.

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members of the EU have an interest in improving their rate of economic growth if it has fallen but also have a continuing interest in reducing the glaring per capita income gap between themselves and the Union. They stand to gain handsomely from the EU's Regional Development and Structural Readjustment Funds and are likely to attract foreign private capital as members of the EU. The timing of applications for EU membership, for example, by formerly communist countries, such as Poland, Hungary, Romania, and others, is therefore primarily determined by the willingness of the EU to accept them as new members. As argued in chapter 3, a union will have an interest in accepting poor peripheral economies typically only when the net cost of excluding them is bigger than the cost of accepting them. More precisely, the argument is that an incentive for accepting these poor countries exists when negative externalities originating in these outsider countries threaten to disrupt the union's stability, security, and prosperity. The sources of these externalities may reside in economic mismanagement, political instability, or social unrest. A particularly common form of negative externality is illegal immigration. Economic inclusion through integration rather than exclusion, goods rather than people, trade instead of migration may become an expedient integrative formula for defusing the threat of social disruption caused by such illegal immigration ± especially when a union's labor market is saturated.89 Trade and investment may raise living standards and increase employment opportunities, thus easing the pressure to migrate.90 Events in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s suggest that the scope of negative externalities originating in the periphery of the Community did indeed shape the attitude of EC members regarding enlargement to the 89

90

The ``push'' factor of migration, namely marked differences in the marginal productivities of labor and capital from one economy to another, will disappear, according to the factor-price equalization theorem, when free trade and investment are allowed. See Wolfgang Stolper and Paul Samuelson, ``Protection and Real Wages,'' Review of Economic Studies 9 (1941), 58±73; Paul Samuelson, `Ìnternational Trade and the Equalization of Factor Prices,'' Economic Journal 58 ( June 1948), 163±184. Perfect factor-price equalization, however, is not a necessary condition for migration to cease, for migration is costly. It involves separation from family and friends, acclimatization to a new cultural and linguistic environment, and sometimes even payment to smugglers. Rational expectations about improved domestic opportunities may thus suf®ce to dampen emigration pressures. See James Holli®eld, ``Migration and International Relations: Cooperation and Control in the European Community,'' International Migration Review 26 (Summer 1992), 568± 595. See also James Holli®eld, Immigration, Markets and States: The Political Economy of Postwar Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); Ulrich Hiemenz and Klaus Werner Schatz, Trade in Place of Migration (Geneva: International Labor Of®ce, 1979).

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East. The European Union's eastern periphery was moving from an era of communism and rigid command economies towards a goal of democratic pluralistic regimes with market economies. This transformation represented a gargantuan social experiment of uncertain outcome. Its failure threatened to play havoc with West European projects for monetary and political union and seriously risked undoing most of the European Union's progress up to that point in economic integration. Above all, Western Europe feared massive migratory movements if the process of political transition and economic restructuring in the East went awry. Economic ``push'' factors, such as rising unemployment, food shortages, and a decline in the already precarious standard of living, combined with ethnic tensions and mounting criminality, had already motivated hundreds of thousands to move west. In the early 1990s the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees predicted as many as 25 million refugees from all over Eastern Europe if political instability and unfavorable socio-economic conditions continued.91 The threat of such massive migration caught Western Europe at a particularly unwelcome time. In 1991, there were 15 million unemployed workers in Western Europe, of which 12 million resided in the EU. This amounted to some 6 percent of the population of Western Europe. The unemployment rate among those aged under 25 averaged 35 percent. With the onset of the recession in the early 1990s these numbers stood to rise signi®cantly. Immigration was rapidly becoming a core issue of electoral campaigns in many European countries. The growing number of foreigners who were competing with indigenous workers for a dwindling number of jobs fomented xenophobia and exacerbated social tensions. Clearly the problem of migration had to be tackled at the source rather than through a policy of containment. The West responded to the plight in the East initially by offering technical assistance and advice in areas such as food distribution, privatization, banking, civil service reform, education, environment and energy through the PHARE and 91

Baudoin Bollaert, ``L'Occident face aÁ la miseÁre de l'autre Europe,'' Le Figaro (November 22, 1990), 4. See also Norbert Kostede, `Ìgor Ante Portas,'' Die Zeit (December 14, 1990), 13; Kuno Kruse and Brigit Schwarz, ``Neue Freiheit, Neue Grenzen,'' Die Zeit, Dossier (February 15, 1991), 13±15; J. Dempsey, ``Seven Million May Leave the Soviet Union,'' Financial Times ( January 26, 1991); ``Poor Men at the Gate,'' The Economist (March 16, 1991), 11±12; Lilia Shevtsova, ``Post-Soviet Emigration Today and Tomorrow,'' International Migration Review 26 (Summer 1992), 241±257. The crisis proportion of such an in¯ux becomes clear, when this predicted number of refugees is compared with past averages. The yearly average net migration into the twelve EC countries was 161,400 for 1980 to 1984; and 533,000 for 1985 to 1989. See David Coleman, ``Does Europe Need Immigrants? Population and Work Force Projections,'' International Migration Review 26 (Summer 1992), 449.

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the TACIS programs.92 Economic loans were provided by the European Investment Bank (EIB). The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) concentrated its lending to the nascent private sector. Such traditional aid, however, proved insuf®cient. The attempted Soviet coup of August, 1991, signalled to the West that more effort was needed to avert chaos.93 Only integration of Eastern and Western Europe seemed to offer a way of stimulating economic growth and producing suf®cient political stability to mitigate the pressure for large-scale migration. Jackie Gower notes that ``[u]ntil the summer of 1991 the prevailing view in Brussels was that none of the former Comecon states could realistically be regarded as candidate members of the Community until well into the next century. Indeed, it is arguable that the EU's overriding objective at this time was to avoid the question of membership.'' Gower concludes that the shock of the attempted Moscow coup changed the EU's attitude towards enlargement.94 Avoidance was simply no longer a sensible policy option. Instead, the Community initiated negotiations on gradual integration with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. On December 16, 1991, farreaching association agreements (also called `Èurope Agreements'') were signed, under which the EU promised to remove its barriers to industrial imports from the three countries within ®ve years. Each of these states in turn committed themselves to take concrete steps towards a market economy and pluralist democracy. They agreed, notably, to model their competition laws on those of the Community and also to bring their laws regarding intellectual and commercial property, public procurement, banking, ®nancial services, company accounts and taxes, indirect taxation, technical rules and standards, consumer protection, health and safety, transport, and the environment into line with EU practice.95 92

93 94

95

PHARE is the acronym for ``Pologne, Hongrie: ActiviteÂ pour la Restructuration Economique.'' (The word phare also means lighthouse in French.) The PHARE program now includes ten countries in Eastern Europe. It is funded by the EU budget and the money is given by way of grants. The total sum allocated to PHARE was raised to 1 billion Ecu in 1992. (See Heinz Kramer, ``The European Community's Response to the New Eastern Europe,'' Journal of Common Market Studies, 213±244, especially 221±226.) TACIS stands for Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States. Its budget amounted to 450 million Ecu in 1992. Edward Mortimer, European Security after the Cold War, Adelphi paper no. 271 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1992), p. 21. See Jackie Gower, `ÈC Relations with Central and Eastern Europe,'' in Juliet Lodge, The European Community and the Challenge of the Future (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993, 2nd edn), pp. 289±290. Commission of the EC, Association Agreements with the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe: A General Outline, COM (90) 398 (Brussels 1990); Commission of the EC, Association Agreements with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, Background Briefs (Brussels, 1992). After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, separate negotiations were conducted between the EU and the Czech and Slovak Republics.

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Romania and Bulgaria signed similar association agreements with the EU in 1993.96 During the Copenhagen Summit in June 1993, the EU offered more formal political ties and greater market access. New vehicles for cooperation ± so-called `àssociation councils'' composed of foreign ministers of the Twelve and their counterparts in the `àssociate'' states ± were set up. Foreign ministers also agreed to an Anglo-Italian plan for formal cooperation at international conferences and joint foreign-policy actions with the associate states. A year later, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel announced a comprehensive program for a European Union Ostpolitik and pledged to promote it during Germany's presidency of the Union which started on July 1, 1994. Kinkel stressed in particular the need to bring the Ukraine rapidly within the European cooperation system and to defuse tensions between Kiev and Moscow. Kinkel justi®ed such a policy by saying that ``the economic crisis [in the Ukraine] and the tensions with Russia affect us directly . . . They could have far-reaching consequences.''97 After two years of negotiations, Russia signed an agreement with the Community during the EU Summit on Corfu in June 1994. The agreement removed quotas on most Russian exports except some textiles and steel products, and set forth an intention to undertake negotiations on a free-trade agreement in 1998. Similar cooperation agreements are being negotiated with the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Kazakhstan.98 Further EU concessions to Eastern Europe included promises to phase out gradually limits on imports of so-called ``sensitive'' goods (iron, steel, farm products, chemicals, textiles, clothing, and footwear) from the East and the adoption in May 1995 of a so-called ``white paper'' on Eastern Europe. The 300-page paper was addressed to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania and constituted a speci®c road-map for these countries to align their 96

97 98

The association agreements sought to establish not only gradual market integration but also wide-ranging cooperation that included industrial collaboration aimed at structural change, promotion of scienti®c research and technological development, support of vocational training and higher education, cooperation in the energy, environmental, and telecommunications sectors, regional development, and cooperation in the ®ght against money laundering and drug traf®cking. See Heinz Kramer, ``The European Community's Response to the New Eastern Europe,'' 229±230. Quoted in Quentin Peel, ``Bonn and Paris plan EU Ostpolitik,'' Financial Times (March 25, 1994), 2. Germany's sensitivity to the migration issue can be explained by its proximity to Eastern Europe. There is little doubt that Germany would bear the main cost of massive emigration from the East. See Klaus Manfrass, `Èurope: South±North or East±West Migration?,'' International Migration Review 26 (Summer 1992), 389.

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economies to the internal market as a step towards full membership of the European Union. This remarkable ¯urry of initiatives notwithstanding, the political will in the EU to carry out plans for further integration cooled markedly in 1995. There are two simple reasons, both of which are consistent with the logic of the externality argument. First, the early market concessions of the EU were successful in warding off the threat of mass migration. The Union's share of former Comecon countries' exports and imports rose from 20 percent in 1988 to almost 50 percent in 1992 and has grown continuously ever since.99 Increased trade, in turn, led to brisk export-led economic growth that helped to re-establish a semblance of order and stability in the East. Second, in view of this success it was not clear why the EU would have had an incentive to deepen integration with the East. The price of continuing the process of enlargement no longer appeared worth the marginal bene®t. The European Commission calculated that it would cost the enormous sum of Ecu 38 billion ($47 billion) in aid to extend regional and social policies of the EU to the countries of Eastern and Central Europe.100 This meant that Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal risked losing generous payments from Brussels, and that taxpayers, particularly in Germany, would be asked to foot the additional bill of enlargement. The cost promised to increase signi®cantly if the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) were extended, because subsidies would have to be paid to Eastern farmers. Alternatively, the EU would have to reform the CAP, reducing farmers' reliance on price support before proceeding with enlargement. However such a move was likely to be foiled by powerful farmer lobbies in the West. Enlargement would also necessitate institutional reforms including the widening of majority voting, a change that was vehemently opposed by Britain. None of these steps were politically palatable. Unsurprisingly, a senior Commission of®cial noted in the mid-1990s that ``the [current] level of seriousness about enlargement is not minimal, it simply does not exist.''101 Supply of integration Chapter 3 argued that integration is most likely to succeed when two supply conditions are satis®ed in addition to the demand condition. There are two primary supply conditions: ®rst, ``commitment 99 100 101

See Eurostat, Balance of Payments, Monthly Statistics, various issues. Lionel Barber, ``Brussels Keeps Shut the Gates to the East,'' Financial Times (November 16, 1995), 17. Quoted in ibid., 17.

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institutions'' such as centralized monitoring and third-party enforcement enhance the chances of sustained cooperation by acting as constraints on member states in circumstances where self-help measures alone are insuf®cient to prevent reneging of contractual obligations. Second, the presence of an undisputed leader state among the group of countries seeking closer ties serves as focal point in the coordination of rules, regulations, and policies; it also helps to ease distributional tensions by assuming the role of regional paymaster. The European Union satis®es both of these conditions. It possesses the most far-reaching commitment institutions of any recent regional integration scheme and it bene®ts from the presence of Germany, which, in the process of deepening, has provided critical institutional leadership and has been willing to ease distributional tensions through generous side-payments. Two EU institutions, in particular, are responsible for monitoring and enforcing Community obligations: the Commission and the European Court of Justice. An important task of the Commission is to see that individuals, companies, and member states do not act in ways which run counter to the treaties or EU secondary law.102 For example, if ®rms enter into an agreement that restricts competition, the Commission may seek a voluntary termination of such an agreement or issue a formal decision prohibiting it and in¯icting ®nes on the parties to the agreement. It can also take member states to task by demanding termination of an infringement, or by taking the matter to the Court of Justice for a ®nal decision.103 The Court also plays a key monitoring and enforcing role in integration. Most notably, it has improved the effectiveness of the EU enforcement mechanism through two judge-made doctrines: supremacy and direct effect.104 The supremacy doctrine holds that EU law has primacy over national legislation; and the direct-effect doctrine (discussed above) provides that EU law is directly applicable to the citizens 102

103

104

Treaty and secondary law has been considerably broadened in scope over the years. It was originally con®ned to issues dealing with trade in a narrow sense. Today it regulates a wide range of areas, including competition, intellectual and commercial property, public procurement, state aid, telecommunications, banking, ®nancial services, company accounts and taxes, indirect taxation, technical rules and standards, consumer protection, health and safety, transport, environment, research and development, social welfare, education, and even political participation. Swann, The Economics of the Common Market, p. 50. Besides the Commission, member states also have the right to bring cases to the Court. In practice, however, legal proceedings initiated directly by member states against each other are relatively rare. See Ulrich Everling, ``The Member States of the European Community Before their Court of Justice,'' European Law Review 9 (1984), 215±241. See Burley and Mattli, `Èurope Before the Court: A Political Theory of Legal Integration.''

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of the member states without prior intervention by their governments. Direct effect authorizes private parties (®rms and individuals) to seek enforcement of treaty obligations against member governments (``vertical'' enforcement) and also against private parties (``horizontal'' enforcement).105 Individuals have even been empowered recently to pursue legal actions against member governments that fail to implement community directives (i.e., secondary legislation) correctly or in a timely fashion.106 This direct participation of private parties in the enforcement of the Treaty of Rome, a treaty of international law, is without precedent. It has greatly improved the Court's role as central monitoring agent. By the same token, it has increased the Court's caseload. In response, the EU added a new institution, the Court of First Instance, to its enforcement system in 1988. This new Court was established to hear and give judgement on a number of speci®c types of legal action, particularly on complaints or disputes arising from the EU's competition policy.107 Finally, in a notable step to further the Court's effectiveness, the EU empowered the ECJ to impose heavy penalties upon member states that fail to comply with Court rulings. The second supply condition refers to institutional leadership. Here Germany has played a key role, particularly since the mid-1970s. By then Germany had begun moving into a league of world economic powers of which the only other members were the United States and Japan.108 Germany had weathered the economic crisis triggered by the oil-shocks considerably better than any other European economy. ``The picture that emerge[d was one with] Germany ®rmly at the top . . . rather than [one of ] an association of more or less equal states progressing harmoniously and happily towards Union.''109 Germany's economy exhibited greater productivity than the other European economies in the sectors most threatened by international competition (steels, textiles, clothing, etc.); it was home to a higher proportion of the most dynamic industries (equipment goods, chemicals, and agrifood industries) and it showed continuing capacity to 105

106

107 108 109

See case 36/74, B.N.O. Walrave and L. J. N. Koch v. Association Union Cycliste Internationale, European Court Reports, (ECR) (1974), 1405; and case 149/77, Gabrielle Defrenne v. SocieÂteÂ Anonyme Belge de Navigation AeÂrienne Sabena, ECR (1978), 1365. See case 152/84, Marshall v. Southampton and South West Hampshire Area Health Authority (Teaching), Common Market Law Review 1 (1986), p. 688; and case 152/84, ECR (1986), 737. Clive Archer and Fiona Butler, The European Community Structure and Process (New York: St. Martin's Press 1992), p. 37. Peter Ludlow, The Making of the European Monetary System (London: Butterworth, 1982), p. 8. Ibid.

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specialize and concentrate on products with a high technology input.110 The strength of the German economy was re¯ected by the value of the Deutsche Mark (DM) which rose over 30 percent against the currencies of Germany's twenty-three major trading partners between 1972 and 1977.111 The German economy has remained the strongest in terms of gross domestic product (GDP); its represents almost one-quarter of the Community's GDP and contributes about one-quarter to the EU's external and internal trade. Germany is the main trading partner of thirteen EU member states, as well as Switzerland, Turkey, and the former Yugoslavia; and it is the second most important economic partner after Russia for most East European states. Germany's centrality to Europe is of course not a new fact; John Maynard Keynes wrote before the First World War: ``Round Germany as a central support the rest of the European economy system group[s] itself, and on the prosperity and enterprise of Germany the prosperity of the rest of the Continent mainly depend[s].''112 German economic preeminence is bound to translate into political in¯uence within the Union. Germany has indeed been the key policy initiator and institutional agenda setter in a wide range of issue areas. For example, it is credited with launching the European Monetary System, `àrguably the ®rst major act of German leadership in the history of the European Community.''113 It played central roles in the initial outline of the budget compromise at the Stuttgart Council summit in June 1983; in relaunching the EMU at the Hanover summit in June 1988; and in calling for an inter-governmental conference (IGC) on political union paralleling the proposed EMU.114 Germany's contribution to the institutional architecture of the Union further includes the strengthening of common macroeconomic, social, and environmental policies, as well as the introduction of concepts such as 110

111 112

113 114

See Commission of the European Communities, Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, Changes in Industrial Structure in the European Economies since the Oil Crisis, 1973±78 (Luxemburg: Of®ce for Of®cial Publications of the EC, 1979). Ludlow, The Making of the European Monetary System, p. 8. Quoted in Simon Bulmer, ``Germany and European Integration: Toward Economic and Political Dominance?,'' in Carl Lankowski (ed.), Germany and the European Community (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), p. 88. See also William Wallace, ``Germany's Unavoidable Central Role: Beyond Myths and Traumas,'' in Wolfgang Wessels and E. Regelsberger (eds.), The Federal Republic of Germany and Beyond (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 1988), pp. 276±285. Ludlow, The Making of the European Monetary System, p. 290. Peter Katzenstein, `Ùnited Germany in an Integrating Europe,'' in Peter Katzenstein (ed.), Tamed Power: Germany in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming).

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subsidiarity115 and multitiered governance.116 Another illustration of Germany's in¯uence is the widespread acceptance of the Bundesbank as the model of statute for the European Central Bank, and the adoption by the Union of the ``Rhineland model of capitalism,'' a form of economic liberalism with strong provisions for social policy cushioning.117 German in¯uence is also felt in the ®eld of technical standards. The German national standards-setting organization Deutsches Institut fuÈr Normen (DIN) has long set the tone in a wide range of European industries. DIN's in¯uence is also felt indirectly through its active participation in European standards-setting organizations such as CEN and CENELEC.118 A measure of this indirect in¯uence is DIN's control of the largest number of secretariats for technical committees within CEN and CENELEC.119 For example, in March 1989, DIN held 75 out of 212 CEN/CENELEC secretariats for technical committees, that is, 35.4 percent. The British Standards Institution (BSI) held 18.4 percent and the Association FrancËaise de Normalisation (AFNOR) 17.9 per cent. This shaping of EU institutional arrangements by Germany may favor German interests more directly than those of other member states, thus possibly giving rise to distributional concerns. Simon Bulmer notes: The adoption of German institutional rules (e.g. on EMU) and norms (e.g. subsidiarity) mobilizes a procedural bias that should facilitate the articulation of German interests. There is, of course, a time-lag in how this institutional power comes into play. Shaping the EU's constitutive politics in one time period will only mobilize bias enabling Germany to advance its interests in the regulative politics of the EU in a subsequent time period.120

For example, German insistence on ®scal rectitude in the Maastricht 115

116

117

118 119 120

Subsidiarity means that the Community should take action only if the objective of a proposed action cannot be suf®ciently achieved by the member states at the domestic level. See Simon Bulmer and William Paterson, ``Germany in the European Union: Gentle Giant or Emergent Leader?,'' International Affairs 72 (1996), 9±32. On the broader in¯uence of Germany's pragmatic version of monetary policy, see Kathleen McNamara, A Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). Simon Bulmer and William Paterson, The Federal Republic of Germany and the European Community (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), p. 12; and Michael Hodges and Stephen Woolcock, `Àtlantic Capitalism versus Rhine Capitalism in the EC,'' West European Politics 16 ( July 1993), 329±344. European Standards Committee and European Electrical Standards Committee; both are known by their French acronyms. Stephen Woolcock, Michael Hodges, and Kristin Schreiber, Britain, Germany and 1992 (London: Pinter, 1991), pp. 48±49. Simon Bulmer, ``Shaping the Rules? The Constitutive Politics of the European Union and German Power,'' in Katzenstein (ed.), Tamed Power.

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convergence criteria will come into play in the run-up to the decision on who proceeds to stage three of EMU beginning in 1999.121 Nevertheless, German leadership has largely been gentle rather than imposing.122 Germany strongly prefers to build consensus from within the Union and, if necessary, offers concessions to preserve that consensus. To avoid the risk of political isolation in Brussels, Germany has been careful to launch nearly all its initiatives in tandem with other major EU partners.123 The EMS was presented as a Franco-German project, as were proposals for an intergovernmental treaty on foreign policy coordination, tabled at the 1985 Milan Council summit. The German initiative for reviving the integration project, originally put forth by Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 1981, became the Genscher±Colombo initiative, once Italian support was canvassed.124 Similarly, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's letter of April 1990 to the Irish presidency, calling for an IGC on political union, was co-signed by the French President Mitterand. Leadership is also expressed by Germany's willingness to ease distributional tensions and act as regional paymaster. Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU budget (measured both in absolute and per capita terms) which redistributes substantial resources, notably through the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund, and more recently the Cohesion Fund. The primary bene®ciaries of these funds are the poorer EU members. The existence of the funds depends much on continuing German prosperity and generosity. Germany's net contribution to the budget has increased from DM 10.5 billion in 1987 to DM 22 billion in 1992. It is estimated to exceed DM 30 billion by the end of this decade. In 1996, Germany's ®nancial contribution to the EU amounted to about two-thirds of the net income of the Union, double the relative size of the German GDP in the EU.125 In conclusion, it is worth pondering why Germany has assumed the role of institutional leader and regional paymaster. In part, the answer is that Germany acts out of economic self-interest. Germany depends 121 122 123 124 125

Ibid. ``Gentle giant'' is how Simon Bulmer characterizes Germany in his writings. See p. 103, note 116. Jeffrey Anderson, ``Hard Interests and Soft Power, and Germany's Changing Role in Europe,'' in Katzenstein (ed.), Tamed Power. Bulmer, ``Germany and European Integration: Toward Economic and Political Dominance?'' Katzenstein, `Ùnited Germany in an Integrating Europe,'' p. 32. See also Michael Shackleton, ``The Budget of the European Community,'' in Juliet Lodge (ed.), The European Community and the Challenge of the Future (London: Pinter, 1989), pp. 129±147.

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economically on its European partners as much as they depend on Germany, and thus any measure that improves stability and security in trade and investment in Europe is likely to suit Germany. For example, in the late 1970s German industrialists expressed serious concern over the continuing appreciation of the Deutsche Mark against other European currencies. Such a trend posed serious risks to German exports. A return to a ®xed exchange rate regime, as proposed in the EMS, seemed in Germany's obvious interest. The EMS also promised to rid the European economies of monetary disturbances that tend to give rise to protectionist pressures, hurting German export interests.126 More generally, unobstructed access to a single and prosperous European market is of obvious interest to Europe's most powerful and ef®cient economy. It enables German ®rms to expand through increased exports, mergers and acquisition. Regional production networks, in turn, reduce production costs and raise the international competitiveness of German ®rms. However, not all interests are purely economic. In the early years, German elites embraced European integration to gain international rehabilitation and establish an equality of sovereign right between Germany and its neighbors. Later, participation in the deepening process of integration reinforced commitment to values such as support for basic human rights, democracy, social justice, and the rule of law.127 Interestingly, Germany has been promoting these same values vigorously of late at the supranational level, pressing for greater transparency and accountability, insisting that human and social rights be respected, and pushing for greater empowerment of the European Parliament. Integration and ef®ciency: a concluding note A main argument of this chapter has been that integration serves to economize on trade and investment transaction costs. If this ef®ciency view of integration is correct, it is expected that the completion of the Single European Market program will, for example, provide an important stimulus to inward investment ¯ows. Recent studies have con®rmed such a prediction. The EU absorbed 44 percent of global foreign investment ¯ows in the early 1990s, compared to 28 percent in the mid1980s.128 126 127

128

Ludlow, The Making of the European Monetary System, pp. 35±47 and 73. Rudolf Hrbek and Wolfgang Wessels, ``National-Interessen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Integrationsprozess,'' in R. Hrbek and W. Wessels (eds.), EGMitgliedschaft: Ein Vitales Interesse der Bundesrepublik Deutschland? (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 1984), pp. 29±69. See Commission of the European Communities, The Impact and Effectiveness of the Single Market (Luxemburg: Of®ce for Of®cial Publications of the EC, 1996), p. 4.

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The ef®ciency view of integration also holds that the extension of the Union's rules and enforcement mechanisms through EU membership will mitigate the risks of investing in the periphery. And as these institutional safeguards lower the risks, the ¯ow of transnational capital into the periphery should increase. What is the evidence? Is EU membership positively related to growth in capital in¯ows holding other factors constant? I test this using a balanced panel. The spatial temporal domain includes sixteen European states for the years 1970 to 1994.129 During the chosen time period, six of the sixteen states entered the union (the UK, Ireland, and Denmark in 1973; Greece in 1981; Spain and Portugal in 1986). Of the other ten states, six were members throughout the time period covered (Germany, France, Italy, and the Benelux), and four were non-members for the entire time period (Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Austria). The dependent variable is the percentage change in foreign direct investment in constant dollars. The primary independent variable represents the ®rst ®ve years of membership of the European Union. This is a dummy variable coded as one in the year a state joins the European Union and the following four years. All other cases are coded as zero. Two control variables were added: real interest rates (calculated as discount rate minus in¯ation rate) and economic growth.130 Combining cross-sectional and time-series observations in a single analysis poses a number of potential estimation problems. Most importantly, this type of analysis requires simultaneous correction for temporal autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity across cases. In order to accomplish this, I use a technique developed by Kmenta which he calls a ``cross-sectionally heteroskedastic and timewise autocorrelated model.''131 In my use of the Kmenta technique, however, I assume that the serial correlation of the errors follows the same process across cases. The assumption in pooled series analysis is that similar patterns exist across cases. This should be true not only of the relationships among variables, but also of the process underlying serial correlation.132 Thus, 129 130

131 132

The analysis begins with the year 1970 because data for the 1960s are sketchy and incomplete. Data on foreign direct investment, discount rates, in¯ation rates, and economic growth were obtained from the International Monetary Fund's International Financial Statistics, various issues. Jan Kmenta, Elements of Econometrics (New York: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 618±622. Nathaniel Beck and Jonathan Katz. ``What To Do (And Not To Do) With TimeSeries Cross-Section Data,'' American Political Science Review 89 (1995), 634±647; and N. Beck and J. Katz, ``Nuisance Versus Substance: Specifying and Estimating Time-Series Cross-Section Models,'' Political Analysis (1996).

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Table 4.3. Effects of new membership in the European Union and economic factors on growth in foreign direct investment (Dependent variable: growth in foreign direct investment) Economic growth (prior year)

Real interest rates

New membership in EU

3.873a (0.637)

1.111a (0.277)

13.013b (5.245)

Constant

R-square

N

0.028

0.24

330

Notes: each cell contains the estimated coef®cient on the ®rst line and its corresponding standard error below. a indicates statistical signi®cance at the 0.001 level b indicates statistical signi®cance at the 0.01 level

I calculate a single value of ``rho'' to be used for each cross-section. The results are reported in table 4.3. As expected, economic growth and real interest rates are positively related to increased rates of foreign investment. The coef®cients are positive and the relationships are statistically signi®cant at the 0.001 level. Most importantly, the ®rst ®ve years of membership in the European Union are positively related to an increase in foreign investment in¯ows independent of economic factors. The coef®cient for new membership in the EU is positive and statistically signi®cant at the 0.01 level.133 The statistical evidence presented here can be plausibly attributed to membership only if factors not yet considered can be ruled out as having had an impact on investment ¯ows. One counterfactual hypothesis is that government intervention in the form of enticing depreciation allowances, investment grants, and favorable performance requirements may have attracted sudden large in¯ows of capital. However, there is little reason to believe that this consideration was important. The general evidence clearly suggests that incentives written into liberal investment legislation do not induce large foreign direct investment (FDI) in¯ows by themselves.134 In the European context, Portugal, for 133

134

It would be desirable to run the analysis differentiating intra-EU investment (i.e., investment originating within the EU) from extra-EU investment (i.e., investment originating outside the EU). However, reliable data are available only from the 1980s, which renders a test for the entire period impossible. See United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Programme on Transnational Corporations), World Investment Report 1993: Transnational Corporations and Integrated International Production (New York: United Nations Publications, 1993), p. 216.

108


example, introduced a far-reaching foreign investment promotion program in 1980 which provided a variety of ®scal and ®nancial incentives in the form of tax holidays, interest rates subsidies, and grants.135 Its effect on foreign investment was very small compared to the big jump in FDI which occurred subsequent to membership. Another example is the Spanish case. Two royal decrees were introduced in Spain in 1981 to liberalize foreign direct investment. They did not signi®cantly increase Spain's capital base. Output remained stagnant, with employment declining, in¯ation rampant and the current account heavily in the red.136 The turning point came only in 1986 after its accession to the Treaty of Rome. FDI soared from $2 billion in 1985 to $3.4 billion during Spain's ®rst year of membership and $4.7 billion in 1987.137 3

The Zollverein

In the early years of the nineteenth century, Germany was fragmented into over three hundred independent kingdoms, electorates, duchies, imperial cities, ecclesiastical territories, and estates of imperial kings.138 These territories had enjoyed increasing independence ever since the close of the Middle Ages, but were enabled to claim full sovereignty only with the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.139 After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Germany's political entities were consolidated into 38 states, which grouped themselves into the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund).140 This union of sovereign states 135

136

137

138 139 140

Peter Buckley and Patrick Artisien, ``Policy Issues of Intra-EC Direct Investment: British, French and German Multinationals in Greece, Portugal and Spain, with special reference to Employment Effects,'' Journal of Common Market Studies 26 (December 1987), 222. J. B. Donges and K. E. Schatz, ``The Iberian Countries Facing EC Membership: Starting Conditions for their Industries,'' Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 121 (1985), 756±778. See Tom Burns, ``The Open-Door Policy Continues,'' Financial Times (October 21, 1992), p. 6 of Times special Survey on European business locations. See also Buckley and Artisien, ``Policy Issues of Intra-EC Direct Investment,'' and P. Buckley and P. Artisien, North±South Direct Investment in the European Communities (London: Macmillan, 1987). William Otto Henderson, The Zollverein (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1958, 2nd edn), p. 1. Arnold Price, The Evolution of the Zollverein, pp. 12±19. See Hermann Oncken and F. E. M. Saemisch (eds.), Vorgeschichte und BegruÈndung des Deutschen Zollvereins 1815±1834. Akten der Staaten des Deutschen Bundes und der EuropaÈischen MaÈchte (Berlin: Reimar Hobbing, 1934), vols. I±III; especially vol. I, section 2, entitled, ``Die Verhandlungen am Bundestag, die Wiener Konferenzen und die suÈddeutschen Einigungsbestrebungen,'' pp. 297±548. For a carefully detailed study of the Vienna Final Conferences, see Karl Ludwig Aegidi, Aus der Vorzeit des Zollvereins. Beitrag zur Deutschen Geschichte (Hamburg: Noyes & Geister, 1865).

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109

(Staatenbund as opposed to Bundesstaat), where unanimity was required for joint action, proved utterly inadequate to provide for either economic or political unity. Political jealousies and the desire for independence blocked any attempt at economic uni®cation. In a period where income taxes were non-existent, and customs and excise duties were the main sources of state revenues, the submission to a common customs system with an independent customs administration would have amounted to giving away a vital part of sovereignty.141 Not surprisingly, the many conferences of the postwar period which were convened to discuss the rationalization of the German economy came to nought. It is . . . almost unbelievable that negotiations were kept up for so many years, and it is easily understood why they failed in their purpose . . . [E]verybody was thinking ®rst of his own state and hardly anybody ever considered the interests of the union they were going to establish, took broad views, or pursued a farsighted policy . . . [A]ll of them refused to give up an iota of their own sovereignty.142

The ®rst step towards an improvement of Germany's antiquated economic structure was taken by Prussia when it announced a customs reform in 1818 that abolished internal duties, established one single customs line along the boundaries of the monarchy, and replaced the chaotic system of over sixty different rates of customs and excises by a standardized tariff.143 In addition, transit dues were introduced in the eastern and western parts of Prussia, which lay on important European trade routes.144 This new customs law put Prussian state ®nances back on a sound basis, aided Prussian industry and commerce and thus consolidated Prussian monarchy.145 In 1828, Prussia formed a customs union with Hesse-Darmstadt, thus forming the nucleus of the German Zollverein. Between 1828 and 141 142 143 144

145

Price, The Evolution of the Zollverein, p. 97. Ibid., p. 90. J. A. R. Marriott and C. G. Robertson, The Evolution of Prussia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915), p. 290. Prussia's Eastern possessions stretched from the Memel at the mouth of the Vistula to MuÈhlhausen in the south of the Harz mountains. They comprised East Prussia, Posen, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Silesia. The Western possessions included Westphalia and the Rhineland Province (from 1824). Prussia was divided by HesseCassel, Brunswick, and the southern portion of Hanover. Hans-Werner Hahn, Geschichte des Deutschen Zollvereins (GoÈttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984), pp. 20±27. Emmanuel Roussakis, Friedrich List, the Zollverein, and the Uniting of Europe (Bruges: College of Europe, 1968), pp. 46±60. A good measure of the relative ef®ciency of the new law is re¯ected by the fact that it reduced administrative costs in Prussia to only 14 to 15 per cent of total receipts (see Price, The Evolution of the Zollverein, p. 121). This contrasts with rates well over 50 percent for most other states. See also August Sartorius von Waltershausen, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1815±1915 ( Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1923, 2nd edn) esp. pp. 1±69.

110

Integration in Europe KINGDOM OF DENMARK D. OF SCHLESWIG

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Figure 4.2 Central Europe in 1815. Reprinted by permission from The Zollverein by W. O. Henderson published by Frank Cass & Company, 900 Eastern Avenue, Ilford, Essex, England. Copyright Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.

The Zollverein

SE

111

A Scale 0

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Brunswick Frankfurt-am-Main Hesse-Cassel Hesse-Darmstadt Lippe-Detmold Mecklenburg-Strelitz Thuringian States

K I N G D O M O F H U N G A R Y

SLAVO NI A Bos n ia

Servia

112


the Seven Weeks' War of 1866, when the old Zollverein came to an end, over sixteen major states joined the German Customs Union. The account of the process of German integration must begin with an examination of the demand-side factors of integration. The following section illustrates the key role played by German business groups in fostering economic integration. It also highlights how a new generation of transportation and production techniques catalyzed the process of integration. The study then turns to an analysis of the conditions under which political leaders acceded to the demands for integration. It concludes with an examination of the supply factors, particularly Prussian leadership, in securing the success of the process of integration. The demand for integration Germany's interstate commerce of the early nineteenth century was thwarted by poor communications and a multitude of antiquated trade restrictions. German roads were notoriously poor. In 1816, a traveler took no less than ®ve hours to go by coach from Weimar to Erfurt, a distance of about twelve miles,146 and about a week to complete the 336 miles between Berlin and KoÈnigsberg.147 Duties were levied not at the frontiers but on roads and rivers, at town gates and at markets. Some eighteen hundred customs frontiers existed in Germany in those years. ``The Germans trade like prisoners behind prison bars,'' declared a Frenchman.148 And Clive Day noted: It was impossible to travel far on any German river without reaching a staple, where the boatsman was subject to delay, inconvenience, and considerable expense. On the Rhine, for instance, there were thirty-two stations of this character where dues were still levied in 1800. As far as regarded the effect on commerce the ¯ow of the rivers might as well have been interrupted by cataracts.149

In a petition drafted in 1819 on behalf of the German Commercial and Industrial League (Deutscher Handels- und Gewerbeverein) and submitted to the German Diet, Friedrich List complained: Thirty-eight customs boundaries cripple inland trade, and produce much the same effect as ligatures which prevent the free circulation of the blood. To make a commercial shipment from Hamburg to Austria and from Berlin to Switzerland, one must cross ten states, study ten sets of customs regulations, pay six different transit duties. He who has the misfortune to reside at a frontier where 146 147 148 149

Sartorius von Waltershausen, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1815±1915, pp. 23±24. Roussakis, Friedrich List, pp. 30±31. Quoted in Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 21. Clive Day, A History of Commerce (New York: Longmans, 1914), p. 347.

The Zollverein

113

three or four states touch each other, passes his entire life bickering with customs of®cials; he has not got a fatherland.150

Comparing conditions in Germany with those of France, List went on to comment that German businessmen ``cast envious glances across the Rhine where, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, from the Dutch to the Italian borders, a great nation carries on its trade over free rivers and free roads without ever meeting a custom-house of®cial.''151 Similar views were expressed in a petition dated July 1819 and signed by some 5,000 German workers, factory-owners, and merchants. In the same year, Rhineland merchants petitioned the King of Prussia to encourage a revival of German industry by removing all customs barriers within Germany and by simply levying duties on land frontiers and at ports.152 The Commercial and Industrial League set up a network of liaisons all over Germany, printed pamphlets and memoranda on economic uni®cation and published a periodical ± the Organ of the German Commercial and Industrial Union (Organ fuÈr den deutschen Handels- und Fabrikantenstand).153 List himself pleaded the League's cause with political leaders and wrote numerous articles, stressing the economic foundations of the project.154 In several instances, business exerted pressure on political leaders by threatening to emigrate or by exporting capital and setting up subsidiaries in the large Prussian market.155 German business kept pressing for deeper integration even after political leaders had signed the treaty establishing a German customs union. Countervailing duties, state monopolies, differences in internal excises, lack of a uniform system of weights, measures, and coinage, and the absence of a single code of commercial law still hampered commerce in Germany. The insistence of demands for deeper integration grew especially as new technologies increased the opportunity cost of transacting in the un®nished German market. Higher opportunity cost translated into greater pressure on political leaders to adjust the scale of 150

151 152 153 154 155

The petition is reprinted in Oncken and Saemisch (eds.), Vorgeschichte und BegruÈndung des Deutschen Zollvereins, 1815±1834, vol. I, pp. 320±324. A translation of the petition can be found in Margaret Hirst, Life of Friedrich List and Selections from his Writings (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1909), pp. 137±144. Hirst, Life of Friedrich List and Selections from his Writings, p. 140. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 27. Price, The Evolution of the Zollverein, p. 37. See Friedrich List, Schriften, Reden, Briefe, edited by the Friedrich List Gesellschaft (Berlin: Reiman Hobbing, 1927±1936). See, for example, Pierre Benaerts, Les Origines de la Grande Industrie Allemande (Paris: F. H. Turot, 1933), p. 53.

114


political and economic organization to the level implied by the new techniques. Two areas of innovation affecting the costs of transacting in the German market deserve special mention: improvements in river transport and the introduction of the railway. The invention of the steamboat revolutionized river traf®c well before it affected overseas trade. As early as 1816, a steamboat made its way from Rotterdam to Cologne.156 By the middle of the nineteenth century, steamships were six times as numerous as sailing vessels on Germany's main rivers. Paddle-driven steamboats, introduced in the 1830s, were soon replaced by much faster screw-driven boats. The ef®ciency of steamboats was later further enhanced by the compound expansion engine and the Parson turbine. And as river traf®c grew, river channels were cleared and deepened.157 Traf®c on water was further eased in the ®rst half of the nineteenth century by an ambitious canal-building program that created a comprehensive network of waterways. Important as river steam-navigation was in lowering transport costs and in extending the home market, it was soon overshadowed by the development of the railway.158 The railways brought what Pollard called ``the single most substantial alteration of the earth's surface undertaken by man up to that time.''159 Their advantages over the traditional means of transportation lay in speed, low cost, and regularity of service. German railway construction began in 1835 with the opening of a fourmile-long suburban line from NuÈrnberg to FuÈrth, in Bavaria. It was followed by the Berlin±Potsdam railway. Both lines were built and run by private companies.160 Fifteen years later, the aggregate mileage of the German railway system amounted to 3,747 miles of railway. Roussakis notes: ``Railway lines crossed the country from north to south and east to west, providing links between regional centers of growing importance. Raw materials could now be carried more quickly and cheaply to factories; this stimulated the growth of concentrated, large-scale production. New markets for industrial and agricultural products were opened up, and old markets became more accessible.''161 The railway served not only to reduce transaction costs and widen markets, but also provided the single most powerful stimulus to Germany's industrial development and growth. It created an unprecedented demand for iron as well as other materials used in the manufac156 157 158 159 160 161

Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 148. Roussakis, Friedrich List, The Zollverein, and the Uniting of Europe, p. 81. Ibid. Pollard, European Economic Integration 1815±1970, p. 51. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 146. Roussakis, Friedrich List, p. 81

The Zollverein

115

ture of cars and construction of ®xed facilities; moreover, the railway needed these goods in a wide variety of ®nished forms, ranging from relatively simple items like rails and wheels to complicated engines and machines, all of which gave a special push to the metalworking and engineering trades.162 In short, the integrating effect of the railway is beyond doubt. Wilhelm Raabe summarized the importance of the railway well when he wrote that ``the German Empire was founded with the construction of the ®rst railway between NuÈrnberg and FuÈrth.''163 Railway shares were thought of as ``bills drawn upon Germany's future unity.''164 The effect of the railway and similar innovations was to ``shrink'' distances and thus increase the opportunity cost of transacting in segmented markets. Sooner or later, political leaders had to yield to business pressure and trade away a measure of independence for new institutional arrangements enabling German merchants and producers to reach levels of competitiveness equal to those of their British and French counterparts. The enlargement issue Willingness by the political leaders of the various German kingdoms, electorates, duchies, and free cities to accede to demands for integration was never automatic. Henderson writes: The notion that . . . [the Zollverein] was set up as the result of the rise of a German national consciousness and was a touching example of brotherly cooperation on the part of the various states will not bear examination for a moment . . . The states concerned fought for their own narrow interests and many of them joined the Zollverein only when economic depression . . . made further resistance to Prussia impossible.165

Benaerts likewise observes that the formation of the Zollverein was not the spontaneous national movement which legendary German history ascribed to it.166 He points out that, on the contrary, the rulers of the many kingdoms, electorates, and duchies exhibited the most narrowminded spirit of Kleinstaaterei, clinging to their sovereign rights and obstructing proposals for economic uni®cation till empty treasuries 162

163 164

165 166

David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 153. Quoted in Ludwig Pohle, Das Deutsche Wirtschaftsleben seit Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig und Berlin: Verlag B. G. Teubner, 6th edn, 1930), p. 11. In the original: ``Wechsel ausgestellt auf Deutschlands Einheit.'' Quote by the poet Karl Beck in Heinrich von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 4th edn, 1887), vol. IV, p. 597. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 95. Benaerts, Les Origines de la Grande Industrie Allemande, p. 63.

116


forced them to seek membership in the Zollvereins.167 (See summary table 4.4).168 Economic deterioration in the various territories was in most cases a direct consequence of the construction of a single Prussian market. Prussia's external tariff contributed to the economic weakening of neighboring territories by raising the prices of imported manufactured goods on which they heavily depended and by limiting the access of their exports to the large Prussian market. Thus isolated and destitute, these small countries faced the unenviable choice of remaining poor and autonomous or trading some of their sovereignty for market access and prosperity. Hesse-Darmstadt was the ®rst state to wake up to the inevitable. Its linen industry and viticulture were badly injured by the loss of Prussian markets. Cheap foreign manufactured articles grew scarce.169 The introduction in 1824 of a boundary tariff system failed to stem the economic decline. Owing to the length of the frontier, the cost of maintaining the new customs line absorbed most of the collected revenues. Smuggling began to ¯ourish and seriously compete with legitimate trade.170 Hesse-Darmstadt approached Prussia in 1825 for an economic agreement. Three years later, a treaty was signed establishing a joint customs union.171 It greatly bene®tted Hesse-Darmstadt's state ®nances through increased customs revenues and provided a much-needed boost to its economy. The creation of the Prussia±Hesse-Darmstadt union was received with great apprehension in neighboring states. The British envoy Mil167 168

169 170 171

Ibid., pp. 63±72. For similar conclusions, see also Price, The Evolution of the Zollverein, pp. 252±255; and Roussakis, Friedrich List, p. 16. A comparison between the economic situation of states prior to membership and after joining the Zollverein cannot be made by looking at economic growth rates, since no such data exist for the period. The examination thus relies on historical accounts. The information given in parentheses in table 4.4 refers to the page numbers of four major studies on the Zollverein. H refers to Henderson, The Zollverein; B refers to Benaerts, Les Origines de la Grande Industrie Allemande; P refers to Price, The Evolution of the Zollverein; and HH refers to Hans-Werner Hahn, Geschichte des Deutschen Zollvereins (GoÈttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984). Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 50. Price, The Evolution of the Zollverein, p. 203. The best discussion of the causes and consequences of the adhesion of HesseDarmstadt and the remaining Middle German states to the Prussian Zollverein is Hans-Werner Hahn, Wirtschaftliche Integration im 19. Jahrhundert: Die hessischen Staaten und der Deutsche Zollverein (GoÈttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), especially pp. 145±246. See also H. Schmitt, Die BegruÈndung des Preussisch-Hessischen Zollvereins vom 14. Februar 1828 (Giessen: Philosophische FakultaÈt der hessischen Ludwigs UniversitaÈt, 1926); and Christian Eckert, ``Zur Vorgeschichte des deutschen Zollvereins. Die preussisch-hessische Zollunion vom 14. Februar 1828,'' in Gustav Schmoller (ed.), Jahrbuch fuÈr Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung and Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich 26 (Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot, 1902), pp. 51±102.

The Zollverein

117

Table 4.4. The timing of application for membership of the Zollverein State

Year of accession Economic situation just to Prussian prior to membership of Customs Union the Zollverein

Economic situation after joining the Zollverein

Hesse-Darmstadt

1828

Economic decline; severe ®nancial crisis. (H:50, B:35, P:203, HH:44)

Great improvement of economic conditions and state ®nances. (P:224, HH:47±48)

Hesse-Cassel

1831

Economic distress leading to revolution of 1830. (H:81, P:175)

Recovery. (B:58, 170)

Thuringian States

1834

Deplorable economic and ®nancial situation; occasionally social and political unrest. (H:81, B:53, P:250, 252, HH:58±68)

Extended markets permit expansion of local industries and development of new ones. Big increase in customs and excise revenues. (H:141, 180, P:170, 190)

Kingdom of Saxony

1834

Economic hardship; (See Thuringian States) social unrest. (P:176, 250, HH:58±68)

Bavaria and WuÈrttemberg

1834

Inef®cient customs union; economic dif®culties. (H:58, P:79, HH:74)

Expansion of trade into northern Germany; expansion of industry. Steep increase in customs revenues. (H:138, 141, 186, 213, 227, B:194, HH:77)

Baden

1835

Economic hardship. (H:105)

Agriculture and commerce revive; sugar re®ning introduced. (H:110, B:170)

Nassau

1835

Economic decline. (H:111, HH:85)

Economic recovery. (H:111)

Frankfurt-am-Main 1836

Trade depression. (H:111, HH:85)

Booming trade. (H:121, HH:87)

Luxemburg

1842

Weak ®nancial position. Financial gains; new (H:150) markets for ore, hides, and agricultural products. (Remains member of Zollverein till 1919.) (H:150)

Hanover and Oldenburg

1854

Severe ®nancial dif®culties. (H:214, B:180)

±

118


banke wrote to the Earl of Dudley from Frankfurt-am-Main on March 14, 1828: The news of this negotiation [between Prussia and Hesse-Darmstadt] has created . . . no small alarm among the merchants and others connected with the trade in this part of Germany who will undoubtedly suffer considerably by it, as the Prussian custom house establishment is conducted with the utmost severity and the adoption of that system in the duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt will have the effect of raising the duties upon a great number of articles of commerce.172

Unsurprisingly, the sequence of events by which most other German states acceded to the Prussian Customs Union followed the pattern of the Hesse-Darmstadt case: ®rst, loss of easy access to the large market, then economic deterioration (at times combined with social unrest) and, ®nally, resignation to the inevitable, that is, economic merger with Prussia. In some cases, however, unwillingness to pay the price of membership of the Prussian union led affected outsiders to search for substitute export markets or to organize rival commercial unions (the second integrative response). Only after these efforts had failed did these outsiders approach Prussia. Three such temporary unions were established, a customs union between Bavaria and WuÈrttemberg, the Middle German Commercial Union, and the Tax Union (Steuerverein). The ®rst came into force in July of 1828 in response to the new Prussian commercial policy. Bavaria and WuÈrttemberg were, however, too small and their economies too much alike to form a powerful and ef®cient union. The customs revenues per head of population were only 9.5 silver groschen; Prussia collected 24 silver groschen. Administrative costs absorbed 44 percent of receipts which compared poorly to Prussia's 14 percent.173 The Middle German Commercial Union (Mitteldeutscher Handelsverein) was set up in September of 1828, only a few months after the Bavaria±WuÈrttemberg union. It comprised Hanover, Saxony, HesseCassel, Nassau, Brunswick, Oldenburg, Frankfurt-am-Main, Bremen, the Saxon duchies, the Reuss principalities, Hesse-Homburg, SchwarzburgRudolfstadt, and the Upper Lordship (Oberherrschaft) of SchwarzburgSonderhausen. The oppositional or anti-Prussian character of this union was unmistakable. The union prohibited its members from concluding individual customs or trade agreements with non-members and sought to keep open the north±south main trade routes from Hamburg and Bremen to Frankfurt-am-Main and Leipzig, but to restrict the traf®c on the west±east routes in so far as they ran through Prussian lands.174 172 173 174

Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 53. Benaerts, Les Origines de la Grande Industrie Allemande, p. 46. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 68.

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119

Efforts to turn this counter-union into a true common market foundered, as did attempts to use the union as a collective bargaining agency in negotiations with neighbouring states.175 The economies of their members exhibited little complementarity, and lack of clear leadership rendered consensus elusive. Furthermore, the economic conditions in the member states of the Middle German Commercial Union deteriorated rapidly and gave rise to widespread revolts in 1830. The Union's demise had begun. Sachse-Weimar was the ®rst to defect, followed by Hesse-Cassel which joined the Prussian Customs Union in 1831 on essentially the same terms as Hesse-Darmstadt.176 Most of the remaining states now considered themselves at liberty to approach Prussia. Prussia signed treaties in 1833 with the ThuÈringen States,177 Saxony, Bavaria, and WuÈrttemberg. These all came into force on January 1, 1834 and on that day the German Zollverein was born. Thirty years after its foundation, Gustav Fischer wrote that the elder generation can still remember how joyfully the opening hour of the year 1834 was welcomed by the trading world. Long trains of wagons stood on the high roads, which till then had been cut up by tax barriers. At the stroke of midnight every turnpike was thrown open, and amid cheers the wagons hastened over the boundaries, which they could thenceforward cross in perfect freedom. Everyone felt that a great object had been attained.178

Baden, an agricultural state that traditionally exported wine, tobacco, hemp, hops, and cattle, joined the Zollverein in 1835 when it became clear that substitute trade with Switzerland and Holland was no adequate compensation for the loss of German markets.179 It was shortly followed by Nassau and the Free City of Frankfurt-am-Main where commercial isolation was threatening utter ruin.180 175 176 177

178

179 180

Hans-Werner Hahn, Geschichte des Deutschen Zollvereins, pp. 43±51. Hesse-Cassel agreed, in addition, to introduce the same excise duties as those imposed in Prussia on wine, cider, and tobacco. The ThuÈringen States included Sachse-Weimar, the smaller Saxon duchies, the Reuss principalities, the Prussian district of Erfurt, Schleusingen, and ZiegenruÈck and the Hesse-Cassel district of Schmalkalden. È ber das Wesen und Bedingungen eines Zollvereins,'' in Hildebrands Gustav Fischer, `Ù Jahrbuch fuÈr NationaloÈkonomie und Statistik (1865), p. 375; quoted in Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 94. Ferdinand Wallschmitt, Der Eintritt Badens in den Zollverein (Hanau: Waisenhaus Buchdruckerei, 1904), pp. 1±75. Henderson, The Zollverein, pp. 110±121. A dispatch to the British Foreign Of®ce from the British envoy to the German Diet of December 1834 reads: ``[H]emmed in by a line of Customs Houses all round the gates of the town . . . [Frankfurt's] commercial intercourse with the interior of Germany was greatly harassed and restricted . . . [I]ts commerce and trade had already fallen off considerably, and . . . great apprehensions were entertained that its fairs would be irretrievably injured unless the union with Prussia was speedily effected; . . . the British houses . . . ®nding their old customers

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The only states to demur further were Hanover and Brunswick. They formed the Tax Union (Steuerverein) in 1834, which Oldenburg joined in 1836. Unlike the Middle German Commercial Union, this Steuerverein was a genuine customs union with a common tariff, a joint customs administration, and common excise duties. In its early years it obtained a revenue of a thaler per head of population from these duties, which was a third more than was raised by the Zollverein.181 With no domestic manufacturing industry to protect, the Steuerverein pursued a policy of free trade to obtain English clothes, colonial goods, and wines as cheaply as possible in exchange for its agricultural goods. It also turned a blind eye on the smuggling of foreign merchandise into the Zollverein.182 By 1840, the revenue differential between the Zollverein and the Tax Union had disappeared.183 In 1841, Brunswick announced its decision to leave the Tax Union for the Zollverein.184 Exasperated at Brunswick's desertion, Hanover entered into negotiations with the Zollverein but failed to reach an agreement because Prussia was not prepared to grant the far-reaching concessions demanded by Hanover. A few years later, plagued by severe ®nancial troubles, Hanover reopened talks and agreed to Prussia's terms.185 It duly signed a treaty with the Zollverein in 1851. Oldenburg joined in 1852. How did the states fare as members of the German customs union? In a nutshell, overwhelmingly well. Bavaria, for example, had drawn about 2.1 million ¯orins from the revenues of its customs union with WuÈrttemberg in 1831. It obtained 3.86 million ¯orins in its ®rst year of membership of the Zollverein.186 Frankfurt-am-Main reported excellent business at the ®rst fair after its adhesion to the Zollverein, and watched with satisfaction the decline of its arch-rival Offenbach.187 Agriculture

181 182 183 184

185

186 187

deterred from frequenting the fairs and their buyers diminish, had themselves become the advocates of the union with Prussia.'' Quoted in Viner, The Customs Union Issue, p. 62. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 88. See Hilde Arning, Hannovers Stellung zum Zollverein (Hanover: Culemannsche Buchdruckerei, 1930). Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 88. According to Hilde Arning, Brunswick refused to renew its membership of the Steuerverein after Hanover turned down a request by Brunswick to discontinue the construction of a road from Uelzen to Salzwedel connecting Prussia and Hanover. Brunswick feared that this road would compete with its own trade road to Hamburg. (See Arning, Hannovers Stellung zum Zollverein, pp. 42±43.) The prospects of sharing the rapidly growing revenues of the Zollverein arguably also played an important role in Brunswick's decision. The extent of Hanover's ®nancial and economic dif®culties is detailed in Arning's Hannovers Stellung zum Zollverein, pp. 74±78. See also Benaerts, Les Origines de la Grande Industrie Allemande, p. 180. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 141. Ibid., p. 121.

The Zollverein

121

Table 4.5. Customs revenues of the Zollverein Year

Customs revenues of the Zollverein (in millions of thalers)

Revenue per capita (in thalers)

1834

14.8

19

1836

18.5

22

1843

25.4

27.6

Source: Benaerts, Les Origines de la Grande Industrie Allemande, p. 58

revived in Baden and sugar re®ning was introduced under the protection of the Zollverein. Similar examples abound (see table 4.4 above). In general, the extension of the market, along with improved communications by road, inland waterways, and railways, permitted the expansion of existing manufacturers and the development of new ones. Tax collection costs fell from an overall German average of 44 percent of total receipts prior to the Zollverein to 9 percent in the late 1830s. Tax revenues increased by 71 percent between 1834 and 1843 while population increased by only 21.7 percent (see table 4.5). The supply of integration The Zollverein brought Germany a broad institutional framework in which technological improvements of the industrial revolution could ¯ourish. A large German market with a growing number of common institutional arrangements created the right environment for con®dence in long-term investment, which, in turn, stimulated economic exchange and produced sustained economic growth.188 These institutional arrangements, and Prussia's role in providing them, are worthy of study in exemplifying the behavior of a regional leader in a successful integration scheme. The executive body of the Zollverein was the `ànnual'' General Congress, which met each time in the capital of a different member state.189 It was composed of of®cial delegates who carried out the instructions of their governments. The Congress solved problems 188

189

German mercantile tonnage doubled between 1835 and 1855; in 1870 it was three and a half times the level of 1835. See Walther Hoffmann, ``The Take-off in Germany,'' in Walt Rostow (ed.), The Economics of Take-off into Sustained Growth (London: Macmillan, 1963), pp. 104±105. Only ®fteen General Congresses were held between 1834 and 1863.

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arising from the common administration of the Zollverein, settled the accounts, and acted as legislative body.190 Prussia was bound to play a leading role in the Zollverein, for two reasons. First, Prussia was by far the largest and wealthiest state in the customs union.191 Second, Prussia always served as recipient of requests for union membership. This gave it considerable freedom in de®ning the terms and conditions under which a new state became a member. For example, in the ®rst enlargement of the Prussian market in 1828, HesseDarmstadt agreed to adopt the Prussian customs law, tariffs, and auditing procedures. It was allowed to administer the collection of customs duties in its own territory but only according to Prussian pattern. Inspections were designed to assure uniformity. Secret articles further limited Hesse-Darmstadt's sovereign rights: its participation in future changes of the common legislation was restricted, and the Prussian customs inspectors at Darmstadt were given wider powers than those laid down in the principal treaty.192 In addition, Prussia undertook all important negotiations with foreign countries on behalf of the union, and it distributed the customs revenues. There remains little doubt that ``the Prussia±Hesse-Darmstadt Union, though nominally an arrangement between two independent sovereign states, was, in fact, the absorption of the smaller country into the customs system of the larger.''193 The terms on which other German states later joined the union were the same as those which Hesse-Darmstadt had accepted. Despite its political preponderance, however, Prussia cannot be said to have abused its position. Its fellow-members joined the union voluntarily and were free to leave as they pleased. No state ever left; all remained members and had strong material incentives to do so. Bowden, Karpovich, and Usher write: ``[Their] ®nancial return made an end of any hostility that might [have been] felt towards Prussia. The gains in revenue soothed the pain of losing complete independence.''194 Prussia distributed the proceeds of the customs in proportion to the population of the various states. This was highly favorable to nearly all states because their per capita consumption was considerably smaller 190

191 192 193 194

After the Seven Weeks' War of 1866, the old General Congress was replaced by a federal customs council. In addition, a popularly elected customs parliament was introduced which was called in session when business required it or when one-third of the customs council demanded a meeting. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 318. The secret articles are reprinted in Oncken and Saemisch (eds.), Vorgeschichte und BegruÈndung des Deutschen Zollvereins 1815±1834, vol. II, pp. 207±211. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 68; my italics. Witt Bowden, Michael Karpovich, and Abbott Payson Usher, An Economic History of Europe since 1750 (New York: AMS Press, 1970), p. 338.

The Zollverein

123

than the Prussian average. At times, this arrangement imposed important ®nancial costs on Prussia. For example, Prussia experienced a decline in receipts following the establishment of the Zollverein, while the other member states registered strong gains. Its revenue per capita was 20 silver groschens in 1833. It then declined to 15.5 groschens and reached the 1833 level again only in 1838.195 Nevertheless, Prussia remained the region's paymaster throughout the existence of the Zollverein, despite occasional misgivings by Prussian of®cials,196 and despite some changes to the system of revenue distribution over the years. Prussia also played an important role as institutional focal point and coordinator in the deepening process of integration. It drafted a new German commercial code, for example, that by the mid-1860s had been adopted by nearly all German states. Prussia played a similar leading role in the harmonization of German mining laws and in the adoption of a common Bills-of-Exchange Law, a single weight system, common railway tariffs, and a common judicial system.197 Its role in monetary coordination deserves special mention: in the early 1830s, each German state issued its own money; as a result, a bewildering variety of coins and notes circulated in Germany. When the Zollverein was established in 1834, the contracting parties agreed to work towards a uni®cation of the monetary systems. In August 1837, the South German states signed a convention creating the South German ¯orin. Almost one year later, the Zollverein member states met in Dresden and signed a monetary convention that secured a ®xed exchange rate between the ¯orin and the Prussian thaler which circulated widely in the North German states. Finally, in January 1857, a monetary convention was held at which the German states agreed to introduce a new currency with circulation throughout Germany. The `ùnion thaler'' (Vereinsthaler), as the new currency was named, was equivalent in value to the Prussian silver thaler. Benaerts notes: `Ìn sum, the new federal money was no other currency than the Prussian thaler.''198 Prussia's currency served as the 195 196

197 198

Henderson, The Zollverein, pp. 141±142. In a memorandum of December 22, 1839, for example, the Prussian government complained that: `Àlthough Prussia fully recognizes that its subjects have shared in the general advantageous results of the customs union . . . the position is quite different when viewed from the ®nancial standpoint . . . Prussia . . . has good reasons for having considerable misgivings if it is to hold no other prospect save that of new ®nancial sacri®ces in the future while all other members of the union look forward to a permanent increase of customs revenue.'' Quoted in Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 142. Benaerts, Les Origines de la Grande Industrie Allemande, pp. 409±410, 536, 627. See also Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 343. Benaerts, Les Origines de la Grande Industrie Allemande, p. 287.

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base of a new monetary system based on a silver standard, which endured until the 1870s. On July 9, 1873, the silver standard was replaced by a new gold standard with a monetary unit named the mark. The thaler was slowly withdrawn from circulation but remained legal tender until 1907.199 It is worth pondering why Prussia took it upon itself to build a single market, assume the role of regional paymaster, and offer institutional leadership. The economic gains of a uni®ed German market were considerably smaller to Prussia than they were to most other German states who much depended on access to the Prussian market. A possible explanation is that Prussia's interest in accepting new members was similar to its motivation to create a single Prussian market in the ®rst place, namely, to increase its international bargaining position for both political and economic gains. After the collapse of the continental system with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, most of Prussia's neighbors reverted to narrow economic nationalism. The Silesian linen industry in the eastern provinces of Prussia was hurt by Russia's policy of national self-suf®ciency and Austria's new prohibitive import duties. Industrialists of the Rhineland and Westphalia, who during the war exported most of their production into France and the Netherlands, now found themselves excluded from those markets.200 Especially damaging to Prussia's economy was Britain's new policy of high tariff protection. The large eastern provinces of Prussia ± particularly east and west Prussia, Posen, and Pomerania, whose grain and timber production was mainly intended for British markets ± experienced sharp reductions in their exports due to new British duties on those commodities. The effect of the Corn Law of 1815 was to eliminate the importation of wheat except in years of bad harvest. The new charges on European timber reduced the number of ships engaged in carrying timber from the Memel to Britain from approximately 980 to about 250.201 199 200

201

Bowden, Karpovich, and Usher, An Economic History of Europe since 1750, p. 571. Wilhelm Treue, WirtschaftszustaÈnde und Wirtschaftspolitik in Preussen, 1815±25 (Stuttgart and Berlin: Verlag von W. Kohlhammer, 1937), especially pp. 6±113. The dif®culties of German industries were aggravated by the arrival of inexpensive cotton and woolen textiles and iron goods produced on a large scale by Britain's superior mechanized industry. In response to increased protectionism and competition, German manufacturers themselves advocated protectionist policies. See, for example, the following petitions: ``Die Reichenbacher Baumwollfabrikanten an Hardenberg (April 8, 1815),'' or ``Die Fabrikinhaber in den Gemeinden Rheydt, SuÈchtels, Gladbach, Viersen und Kaltenkirchen an KoÈnig Friedrich Wilhelm II (April 27, 1818),'' or ``Fabrikanten aus DuÈren and Hardenberg (November 1, 1818),'' in Oncken and Saemisch (eds.), Vorgeschichte und BegruÈndung des Deutschen Zollvereins 1815±1834, vol. I, pp. 23±25, 69±71, 82 respectively. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 32.

The Zollverein

125

To revive its industry and commerce, Prussia repeatedly approached its neighbors to negotiate preferential market access agreements. These efforts, however, were in vain. Prussia was economically too weak to in¯uence commercial policies abroad and administratively too disorganized to be considered an attractive negotiation partner.202 It thus moved, ®rst, to reform its customs system by abolishing internal duties and creating a single Prussian market, and then proceeded to enlarge its economic space by taking smaller German states into its customs union. This sequential enlargement of the single market improved Prussia's international bargaining and retaliation power, enabling it to wring important concessions from neighboring protectionist states in a series of commercial and navigation treaties. Prussia's neighbors watched these events with growing apprehension. They feared that the extension of the Prussian customs system would lead to a reduction of their trade (both legitimate trade and smuggling) with the German states. In Britain, manufacturers blamed the monopolies accorded to the landed aristocrats for encouraging the formation of an increasingly protected German market. Benaerts provides various revealing statements by British deputies who saw a direct link between British protectionist policies and the enlargement of the German Zollverein. One deputy, Mr. Ewans, is quoted as saying: ``This German commercial confederation is the product of our own destructive policy. Haven't we refused access to German timber and grain exports?'' Lord Palmerston concurs: `Òne of the reasons why Prussia seeks to attract the other German states into its union is to force Britain to reduce its duties on grain and timber.''203 The detrimental effect of the Prussian strategy on British industry is strikingly illustrated in a dispatch by Cartwright to the Duke of Wellington dated December 1, 1834: Before 1819 British cotton manufactured goods were only subjected to a very tri¯ing duty on their introduction into Bavaria. By . . . 1819 that duty was ®xed at twenty ¯orins (Gulden) the Bavarian hundredweight . . . In 1828 . . . the duty was further increased to sixty ¯orins, which was considered very high; and now, under the regulations of the Prussian Union, it stands at nearly ninety-®ve ¯orins. [This is] . . . a most rapid and immense augmentation, to the detriment 202

203

Carl Brinkmann, Die Preussische Handelspolitik vor dem Zollverein und der Wiederaufbau vor Hundert Jahren (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1922), pp. 159± 160. Quoted in Benaerts, Les Origines de la Grande Industrie Allemande, pp. 74±75. Similarly, John Bowring of the British Board of Trade argued in a testimony before the Select Committee on Import Duties in 1840: `Ì believe we have created an unnecessary rivalry by our vicious legislation.'' Quoted in Charles Kindleberger, ``The Rise and Fall of Free Trade in Western Europe, 1820±1875,'' Journal of Economic History 35 (March 1975), 34.

126


of British trade; and if these high duties are persisted in, it is feared that the demand for British goods must decrease every year.204

Metternich's Austria also frowned at the ever-growing Zollverein not only because it feared the security implications of a powerful Zollverein, but also because it was concerned about a uni®ed German market's unfavorable commercial repercussions on its industries. Little by little, under the active direction of Prussia and in light of the common interest which must inevitably emerge, the states composing this union will form a . . . coherent bloc . . . And when one considers that . . . th[e] power [to de®ne external commercial policies] lies in the hands of . . . Prussia, . . . one must expect that the in¯uence it has just acquired over our communications with and through Germany will be extremely harmful for the industry of the Empire.205

In short, Prussia's large neighbors were no longer in a position to take advantage of Germany's internal divisions. Prussia adeptly used its newly gained economic weight to secure better terms for its exports. As early as 1824, it obtained concessions from Britain in a shipping convention which was later copied in treaties with Sweden, the Hanse towns, the United States of America, and Brazil.206 Next, Prussia tackled the vexed question of freedom of navigation on the Rhine. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna had adopted the principle of free navigation in international rivers. Holland, however, made every effort to evade the provisions of the Vienna agreement not only by imposing extra duties but also by prohibiting through-traf®c in various commodities. Determined to break Holland's monopolistic position at the mouth of the Rhine, Prussia demanded satisfaction. It negotiated a series of navigation and commercial treaties in which the Dutch made important concessions.207 An Anglo-Prussian convention was signed in March 1841. Its terms, as modi®ed in 1847, lasted until 1865. In 1836, Britain 204 205

206 207

Quoted in Henderson, The Zollverein, pp. 97±98. Metternich's thoughts on the Zollverein are reprinted in Alfons von KlinkowstroÈm (ed.), Aus Metternichs nachgelassenen Papieren (Vienna: Wilhelm BraumuÈller, 1882), vol. V, pp. 507±508. Pollard, European Economic Integration, p. 115. The new Rhine Navigation Act was signed in March 1831. A navigation act between Prussia and Holland was signed in June, 1837, followed two years later by a commercial treaty. And in December 1851 the two countries signed a new commercial and navigation treaty. See Johanna Kortmann, Die Niederlande in den handelspolitischen Verhandlungen mit Preussen vom Wiener Kongress bis zum Schiffahrtsvertrag von 1837 (MuÈnster: Fahle, 1929). Kortmann provides a lucid account of how Holland sought by all means to foil the steady expansion of the Zollverein, for it was well aware that a stronger Prussia was bound to contest its monopolistic position on the lower portion of the Rhine. See, in particular, chapter 4 entitled ``Die Stellung der Niederlande zur Bildung des Zollvereins'' (Holland's position with regard to the formation of the Zollverein). See also P. J. Bouman, ``Der Untergang des hollaÈndischen Handels- und Schiffahrtsmonopols auf dem Niederrhein, 1831±51,'' Vierteljahresschrift fuÈr Sozialund Wirtschaftsgeschichte 26 (1933), 244±269; and Christian Eckert, ``Rheinschiffahrt

The Zollverein

127

offered to abolish its timber duties imposed on Prussia in exchange for lower tariffs on British textiles, but Prussia held out for a reduction of the Corn Laws.208 Between 1846 and 1849 Britain abolished its navigation code and reduced its import duties on timber.209 In 1843 France offered to lower various duties if the Zollverein came to terms. Prussia, however, considered that the proposed concessions were inadequate and decided not to enter into negotiations with France. A Franco-Prussian treaty reducing import duties on raw materials and manufactured articles was only signed in 1862.210 In 1842 Russia announced its intention to reduce its prohibitive duties on certain Prussian exports; and an agreement was reached between Russia and Prussia in 1844.211 The Austro-Prussian commercial treaty of February 1853 reduced import duties to 25 percent ad valorem and stipulated that new tariff concessions made by one of the contracting parties to a third state would automatically be enjoyed by the other party.212 In 1857, Prussia tackled a long-standing irritation in its Baltic trade: stream and sound dues. These dues were monopolistic rents that Denmark had been extracting for over four hundred years from ships and cargoes passing its many islands. Under Prussian pressure, Denmark agreed to abolish these tolls and dues in return for a compensatory payment. North German trade also bene®tted from a substantial reduction of Danish transit dues on roads, railways, and canals in Jutland, Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg.213 In sum, Prussia was successful in enhancing its international bargaining position by increasing the size of the market under its command.

208

209 210

211 212

213

im 19. Jahrhundert,'' Staats- und Socialwirtschaftliche Forschungen 18 (Leipzig: Von Duncker & Humblot, 1900), 1±450. Douglas Irwin, ``Multilateral and Bilateral Trade Policies in the World Trading System: An Historical Perspective,'' in Jaime de Melo and Arvind Panagariya (eds.), New Dimensions in Regional Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 94. Britain also repealed its Corn Laws in 1846. The repeal is attributed, in part, to the harvest failure in Ireland. But it may also have been in¯uenced by Prussian pressure. The most signi®cant reductions in the French tariff were those on the importations of iron and textiles. Prussia's chief concessions to France were reductions in import duties on wines and silks. The treaty contained the Most-Favored-Nation clause. Henderson, The Zollverein, p. 176. Karl Mamroth, Die Entwicklung der oÈsterreichisch-deutschen Handelsbeziehungen: Vom Entstehen der Zolleinigungsbestrebungen bis zum Ende der ausschliesslichen ZollbeguÈnstiÈ sterreichische gungen (1849±1865) (Berlin: Carl Heymanns Verlag, 1887); Adolf Beer, O Handelspolitik im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Vienna: Manz, 1891); chapters 6 and 7 (pp. 136±205) provide a detailed discussion of the 1853 treaty between Prussia and Austria. Charles Hill, The Sound Dues and the Command of the Baltic (Durham: Duke University Press, 1926), especially pp. 254±268.

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It may be assumed that this was a large part of its motivation to extend integration through the incremental enlargement of the Zollverein.214 4

Failed European integration schemes

Chapter 3 argued that states that are negatively affected by regional integration schemes to which they do not belong will respond either by seeking to merge with the area generating external effects (®rst integrative response), or ± if that option is deemed impossible or too costly ± by creating their own regional group (second integrative response). However, like any integration project, such a counter-union is likely to fail when a region lacks an undisputed leader and when the potential for gains from integration is limited either because regional economies lack complementarity or because the small size of regional markets does not offer signi®cant economies of scale. Several examples of such failed European counter-unions have been mentioned above. One was the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) of 1960. Its members traded primarily with the Community rather than with each other. The group was neither compact nor contiguous. Its members were strewn in a loose circle around the Community. Further, EFTA's cohesion was repeatedly weakened by successive defections of EFTA members to the Community, most notably when the UK, the group's potential leader, left in 1973. Regional groups founded in the wake of the Prussian customs union, such as the union between Bavaria and WuÈrttemberg, the Middle German Commercial Union, and the Tax Union, failed because the economies of their members were too small or too much alike and because none of the groups had a clear leader capable of de®ning a coherent commercial policy vis-aÁ-vis Prussia. The remainder of this chapter presents one ®nal episode of failed European integration: projects for a European commercial union in the 1890s. They were triggered, like many other integration schemes, by negative externalities. These were (1) rising American protectionism and (2) competitive pressure from giant American industrial conglomerates, the so-called trusts. The rise of such externalities were related, in part, to the widening and deepening of the single American market. Several European countries responded by creating a European commer214

Over the years Prussia, on behalf of the Zollverein, concluded commercial treaties with countries other than Great Britain, France, Russia, and Austria. These included: Portugal (1844), Sardinia (1845), Mexico (1855), Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay (all three between 1856 and 1859), Italy (1865), Spain (1865), Japan (1869), Switzerland (1869). Many of these treaties included the Most-Favored-Nation clause. See Sartorius von Waltershausen, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1815±1914.


129

cial treaty system. Hopes that this system would develop into a broader and deeper scheme, a European Zollverein or even a `Ùnited States of Europe,'' proved vain. This failure can be attributed, in part, to lack of an undisputed leading state in Europe capable of de®ning a common European commercial policy, and absence of support by business groups for a European commercial union. This neglected episode in European commercial history is particularly striking given that the logic of integration operated against a backdrop of power politics at its crudest. Since 1871 France had been diplomatically isolated. Upon Bismarck's fall in 1890, the German Emperor William II terminated the secret treaty between Germany and Russia, thus opening the door to a new constellation of military alliances in Europe. In 1894, for example, an alliance was concluded between France and Russia by whose terms each partner promised to aid the other in case of attack by Germany or Germany's allies. Another central feature throughout the 1890s was recurrent rivalry among European colonial powers in Africa and the Far East. Nevertheless, there was much thought given to the idea of building a European Commercial Union. The following discussion examines the origins of such a seemingly eccentric idea and considers the causes of its failure. Rising American protectionism Throughout the nineteenth century the United States exported mainly agricultural products and raw materials, such as cotton, wheat ¯our, and meat products. American manufacturers began to sell signi®cant quantities of goods abroad only in the 1890s, much later than Britain, France, and Germany (see table 4.6). America's strength in international trade of manufactures was in machinery, metals, electrical equipment, and processed food.215 This surge of American exports coincided with a period of accentuated protectionism in the United States, aimed both at defending infant industries and obtaining better terms of trade.216 Under the Republican presidency of Benjamin Harrison, Congress adopted the 1890 McKinley Tariff Act. This Act embraced two principles: protection and reciprocity. First, it sought to impose duties on 215

216

See Mary Locke Eysenbach, American Manufactured Exports, 1879±1914: A Study of Growth and Comparative Advantage (New York: Arno Press, 1976), pp. 1±31; G. G. Huebner, ``The Foreign Trade from the Civil War to the Close of the Nineteenth Century,'' in Emory Johnson, T. W. Van Metre, G. G. Huebner, and D. S. Hanchett (eds.), History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of the United States (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1915, reprint 1922), vol. II, pp. 64±85. Sidney Dell, Trade Blocs and Common Markets (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1963), p. 9.

130


Table 4.6. Share of world trade in manufactures (%) United States

1890

1899

1913

3.9

9.8

11.0

United Kingdom

35.8

28.4

25.4

Germany

17.2

19.5

23.0

France

14.5

12.6

10.6

5.1

4.9

4.3

Belgium

Source: William Arthur Lewis, `Ìnternational Competition in Manufactures,'' American Economic Review 47 (May 1957), 579.

articles that were produced in the United States and to admit free of duty those goods that Americans did not produce at all or could only produce in insuf®cient quantities to meet domestic demand.217 Second, the McKinley Tariff envisaged a series of bilateral reciprocity agreements between the United States and Latin American countries. Sugar, molasses, coffee, tea, and raw hides were freely admitted in return for preferential duties on speci®c American agricultural and manufactured goods. The aim of these agreements was to redirect the trade of Latin American countries ± previously dominated by Great Britain ± away from Europe and toward the United States.218 This was not the ®rst American attempt to undermine commercial relations between Latin America and Europe. One year prior to the adoption of the McKinley Tariff, Secretary of State James Blaine convoked a conference in Washington to discuss the feasibility of a PanAmerican customs union, which was attended by nineteen Latin American states.219 Baltimore's daily, The Sun, described the American intention behind that conference as follows: 217

218

219

David Lake, Power, Protectionism, and Free Trade: International Sources of US Commercial Strategy, 1887±1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 100; Frank Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States (New York: Putnam's, 1905, 6th edn), pp. 251±283. Lake, Power, Protectionism, and Free Trade, p. 98; Huebner, ``Tariff Provisions Concerning the Shipping and Foreign Trade of the United States,'' in Johnson, Van Metre, Huebner, and Hanchett, History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of the United States, pp. 335±351. See Louis Bosc, Unions DouanieÁres et Projets d'Unions DouanieÁres (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1904), pp. 254±264; Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, `Ùn Zollverein AmeÂricain,'' Economiste FrancËais (May 25, 1889), 641±644; Gustave de Molinari, ``Le CongreÁs des Trois AmeÂriques et l'Union DouanieÁre des Trois AmeÂriques,'' Journal des Economistes 48 (Paris: Librairie Guillaumine, October 1889), 3±6; Alexandre Peez, ``Le CongreÁs des Trois AmeÂriques,'' Revue d'Economie Politique 4 (Paris: Larose et Forcel, 1890), 272±286; AmeÂdeÂe Prince, Le CongreÁs des Trois AmeÂriques, 1889±90 (Paris: Librairie Guillaumine, 1891). Discussions at the


131

[The motives of the organizers] are . . . the widening of the area over which our high-tariff laws shall prevail, the idea being that, by reciprocal tariff arrangements, we can exclude European manufacturers from the trade of the countries that enter into the proposed customs union. We are to monopolize, if possible, the commerce of Central and South America, but not by the cheapness and excellence of our wares, but by including those regions within our present high tariff wall. We are to have exclusive rights to enter the ports of the signatories on a free-trade basis, while our European competitors are kept out by suitable protective laws.220

The daily press in Europe followed the Washington conference with the greatest attention. The tone was mostly alarmist. A major Viennese daily, for example, wrote: The government of the United States has invited all the states of the New World to participate in a conference in Washington. Its objective is to forge a PanAmerican Union against Europe. Europe ships a large part of its manufactured goods to South America . . . If the [South American] ports are closed to us because of high external tariffs similar to those currently in force in the United States, then a great many of our workers and many more still in France, Germany and Great Britain would be at risk of losing their jobs. 221

This and subsequent efforts by the United States to create a PanAmerican commercial union foundered in the end, primarily because of growing resistance to American hegemony in Latin America. Nevertheless, they sent tremor waves to Europe in the early 1890s and provided added incentive for Europeans to respond in kind. Another protectionist measure taken by the Americans was the Wilson±Gorman Tariff of 1894, passed under the Democratic administration of Grover Cleveland. It continued the special trading relationship with Latin America by lowering duties on a selected and limited number of raw materials. It also reimposed a duty on raw sugar, thereby abrogating the reciprocity treaties negotiated under the McKinley Tariff, and introduced countervailing duties against countries that subsidized their sugar exports to the United States. These provisions were particularly damaging to German sugar exporters.222 Between 1897 and 1912 the United States continued highly protectionist policies. Republican President William McKinley called Congress into a special session soon after taking of®ce in 1897 to revise the tariff once again. Congress responded by passing the Dingley Tariff Act, which eliminated many

220 221 222

Washington conference touched not only on customs union issues but included deliberations on harmonization of standards, monetary union, common transportation policies, and regional arbitration procedures. The Sun 105 (Wednesday, May 29, 1889), supplement, p. 1, my italics. Quoted in Prince, Le CongreÁs des Trois AmeÂriques, p. 87. David Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade, p. 96; Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, pp. 284±230.

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items from the list of freely importable goods and raised general import duties to the highest level they had yet reached.223 The trusts A second development that the Europeans watched with alarm was the creation of giant American industrial conglomerates, the so-called trusts that emerged in the widening American internal market. A trust was a new type of large-scale industrial organization in which the voting rights of a controlling number of shares of competing ®rms were entrusted to a small group of men who thus were able to manage competition among their companies while rationalizing productive processes. Early examples of such ``big business'' were the Standard Oil Trust, the American Tobacco Company, and the American Sugar Re®ning Company.224 The trend towards industrial concentration accelerated particularly during the presidency of McKinley, when government was securely in the hands of friends of big business.225 This restructuring of American industry was of concern to Europeans for two reasons. First, the largest proportion of manufactured exports to Europe came from industries with very high levels of concentration. The three industry groups that accounted for about two-thirds of manufactured exports ± metals; machinery; and food, drink, and tobacco ± were made up of 48 of the 100 largest corporations.226 American restructuring therefore meant keener competition for European producers. Second, gains in the domestic market from economies of scale and monopolistic rents obtained through increased concentration permitted these giant ®rms to undersell competitors abroad.227 223 224

225

226 227

Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, pp. 321±360. In 1890 the Republican administration of Benjamin Harrison adopted the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The Act did not curb the development of industrial monopolies and remained essentially unenforced for twelve years. Ironically, it was invoked by the federal government in 1894 to obtain an injunction against a striking railroad union. The Supreme Court upheld the use of the injunction. It was argued that unions were combinations in restraint of trade within the meaning of the law. On trusts in this period, see Alfred Chandler, ``The Beginning of Big Business in American Industry,'' Business History Review 33 (Spring 1959), 1±31; Alfred Eichner, The Emergence of Oligopoly (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969); Ralph Hidy and Muriel Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 1882±1911 (New York: Harper, 1955). William Becker, The Dynamics of Business±Government Relations: Industry and Exports, 1893±1921 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 36; Alfred Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of American Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 19±51. Becker, The Dynamics of Business±Government Relations, p. 12. William Stead, for example, writes in his The Americanization of the World (New York and London: Horace Markley, 1902): ``The Industrial Commission, which has just concluded its inquiry into the whole question, found from the replies received from


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The European response The combination of rising American protectionism and `ùnfair'' competition were perceived in Europe as the `Àmerican menace.''228 German Chancellor Von Caprivi explained the essence of the problem as follows: What we import from foreign countries we need; to a great extent it consists of indispensable means of subsistence, raw materials and a few half-®nished products which are indispensable for our industry. We must be in a position to pay for these things, and in order to be able to pay for them, we have in general but one means, and that is to send our manufactured articles to the countries from which we have received these raw materials and these means of subsistence.229

But how was this to be achieved in the face of prohibitive tariffs and increasing competition? An anonymous pamphlet appeared in Berlin in 1890 entitled Die Zukunft der VoÈlker von Mitteleuropa.230 Its presumed author belonged to the entourage of Chancellor von Caprivi. The pamphlet stressed the pernicious effect of the McKinley Act on European trade and pointed to the danger for the Old World of rising American protectionism and competition. Europe's prosperity and its very civilization were at risk. The pamphlet concluded that only a tariff union between France and Germany would be an effective remedy against the `Àmerican menace.'' The idea of a European customs union spread quickly throughout Europe. The French journal Le Temps regarded it as likely that the triumph of the prohibitive tendencies in the United States would lead to

228

229 230

over one hundred manufacturers that American manufactures are often sold at lower prices abroad than in the United States'' (p. 377). See also Bosc, Unions DouanieÁres et Projets d'Unions DouanieÁres, pp. 472±482; and Mira Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), especially pp. 70±110. Variations on the theme of `Àmerican menace'' can be found in Jules Domergue, ``Le PeÂril AmeÂricain,'' La ReÂforme Economique 21 (May 26, 1901), 691±693; Fred McKenzie, The American Invaders (New York: Street and Smith, 1901); Louis Leger, ``L'AmeÂricanisation du Monde,'' Le Correspondant (April 25, 1902), 221; Edouard Reyer, ``L'AmeÂricanisation de l'Europe,'' Revue Bleue 17 (April 19, 1902), 484±488; Matthew Simon and David Novack, ``Some Dimensions of the American Commercial Invasion of Europe, 1871±1914,'' Journal of Economic History 24 (December 1964), 591±605; William Stead, The Americanization of the World, especially pp. 342±380; B. H. Thwaite, The American Invasion (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1902); Frank Vanderlip, ``The American `Commercial Invasion' of Europe,'' Scribner's Magazine 31 ( January, 1902), 3±22, (February, 1902), 194±213, (March, 1902), 287±306. Quoted in Henry Farnam, ``German Tariff Policy, Past and Present,'' The Yale Review 1 (May 1892/February 1893), 22. Die Zukunft der VoÈlker von Mitteleuropa [The Future of the People of Central Europe] (Berlin: Druck und Verlag Georg Reimer, 1890), pp. 1±70.

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the abolition of the tariff barriers between European countries `às Colbert had abolished the customs barriers between the [French] provinces.''231 In Germany, the Agrarian Party leader Count Kanitz argued in the Reichstag: `Ìf we are to arrive at some effective measures it will be desirable to go hand-in-hand, if possible, with other European powers, and I am happy to say there is some prospect that this may be done. In all of the European states there is a strong reaction against the new advancement of the American tariff-policy.''232 In France, Count Paul de Leusse feared that American commercial policies would lead to European agricultural ruin, industrial decadence, depopulation, and bankruptcy.233 De Leusse advocated the establishment of a customs union in agriculture between Germany and France, with a common tariff bureau in Frankfurt. This union would gradually include Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Spain. In Austria, Alexander Peez forged plans for a Middle European Zollverein. The entrance of France into the Union was for him a sine qua non. He appeared particularly irritated by the McKinley Act but also lamented protectionist tendencies in Britain.234 A European Zollverein, he claimed, would enable its members to obtain concessions which they could never obtain individually, in particular from the United States.235 Many more proposals for European union by politicians, economists, and journalists made the rounds of European capitals.236 But no one 231

232 233 234

235

236

Quoted in George Fisk, ``Continental Opinion Regarding a Proposed Middle European Tariff-Union,'' Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, nos. 11±12 (November/December, 1902), 27. Ibid., p. 34. See Paul de Leusse, ``L'Union DouanieÁre EuropeÂenne,'' Revue d'Economie Politique (Paris, 1890), 393±401. In 1887 Britain passed the Merchandise Marks Act restricting imports of manufactured goods, while the Society of Fair Trade of 1881 and the Imperial Federation League, founded in 1884, advocated the creation of a customs union for Britain and all its colonies. Alexandre Peez, `À Propos de la Situation DouanieÁre en Europe,'' Revue d'Economie Politique 5 (February, 1891), 121±139, especially 138±139; see also his Zur neuesten Handelspolitik (Vienna: Commissionsverlag v. G. Szelinski, 1895). See, for example, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, ``De la NeÂcessiteÂ de PreÂparer une FeÂdeÂration EuropeÂenne,'' L'Economiste FrancËais (September, 1898), 305±307; Gustave De Molinari, `À Zollverein in Central Europe,'' Gunton's Magazine 12 ( January 1897), 38±46; Gustav Schmoller, ``Die Wandlungen in der EuropaÈischen Handelspolitik des 19. Jahrhunderts,'' Jahrbuch fuÈr Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich 24 (1900), 373±382; Sartorius von Waltershausen, Deutschland und die Handelspolitik der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Berlin: Siemenroth & Troschel, 1898); HandelskammersekretaÈr Wermert, `Èinige Betrachtungen uÈber einen MitteleuropaÈischen Zollverein,'' Annalen des Deutschen Reichs fuÈr Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Statistik 12 (1888), 943±954. The best overview article on projects for European integration in the 1890s is Ernst Francke, ``Zollpolitische Einigungsbestrebungen in Mitteleuropa waÈhrend des Letzten Jahrzehnts,'' Schriften des Vereins fuÈr Socialpolitik 1 (1900), 187±272.


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urged Europeans to stand up to the `Àmerican parvenu'' as passionately as Count Goluchowski, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of AustriaHungary. In an address to the Hungarian Committee on Foreign Relations on November 20, 1897, he recommended concerted European action against ``the countries beyond the sea,'' meaning primarily the United States. His speech, which excited world opinion, is worth quoting at some length: The disastrous competition which . . . we have to submit to from over the seas, and which we will also have to encounter in the future, must be resisted if the vital interests of Europe are not to suffer, and if Europe is not to fall into gradual decay . . . Religious warfare ®lled the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; during the Eighteenth century liberal ideas took root; the Nineteenth Century has been an epoch of struggle between nations; but the Twentieth Century will be a century of struggle for existence in the domain of economics. The nations of Europe must unite in order to defend their very means of existence. May that be understood by all, and may we make use of those days of peaceful development to which we look forward with con®dence, to unite our best energies.237

The importance of Goluchowski's statement is highlighted in a comment on his speech published in 1897 by the American weekly The Commercial and Financial Chronicle: ``The speeches of Austrian foreign ministers have always been regarded in Europe with special interest. It has often happened in previous years that [their] public utterances . . . to the delegations have been received as the highest of®cial statement of the policy, not only of the Dreibund [Triple Alliance], but of European diplomacy in general.''238 The American response to these grand plans for European union varied. Most observers thought them utopian. They felt secure in their belief that such schemes would quickly founder on the proven rocks of intra-European distrust, animosity, and hatred. Occasionally, however, concern was voiced. Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Frank Vanderlip, for example, feared that a European Zollverein was bound to trigger ``the most gigantic commercial war in the history of humanity.''239 Later he added: ``The [European] governments are preparing for a trade war against America . . . [T]he air is full of it. One cannot talk with of®cials there ®ve minutes before the all-pervading impression is secured that Europe is jealous of America.''240 In the end, the American skeptics were proved to be right. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland signed in 1891±1892 237 238 239 240

Quoted in Alfred Fried, The German Emperor and the Peace of the World (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912), pp. 19±20, my italics. The Commercial and Financial Chronicle 65 (December 1897), 1147±1148. Quoted in Revue Bleue, 17, 484. Quoted in The Economist ( July 6, 1901), 1016.

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a central European commercial treaty system.241 France, though not a signatory to the commercial treaties, bene®tted indirectly from them by virtue of Article 11 of the Franco-German peace treaty signed in Frankfurt in 1871. This clause obliged Germany to give France MostFavored-Nation (MFN) privileges.242 However, hopes that the system would develop into a deeper and broader European Commercial Union never materialized. What prevented the central European Commercial Treaty system from growing into a genuine European Union? A central factor was the absence of an undisputed leader. The dividing forces of deeply ingrained animosity and resentment, particularly between the French and the Germans, foiled any attempt at de®ning a common European commercial policy. The Alsace-Lorraine question rendered it emotionally trying and politically delicate for France to seek a rapprochement with Germany. This in turn prompted Germany to blame ``France's irremediable hatred'' against it for the failure of concerted European action. ``Germany and France together would have been in a position to prevent the McKinley [and Dingley] Tariff[s] which [are] so detrimental to all European states . . . [Instead], France went its own way to obtain special favors [at the expense of the Community].''243 A second reason for failure is the virtual absence of sustained demand by business for integration. The American economist H. H. Powers sent a circular letter in 1898 to the secretaries of several chambers of commerce in Europe asking their opinion on plans for a European Zollverein. The typical response expressed little interest in such a union. A common concern was raised by the secretary of the chamber of commerce at Leipzig, who believed that `òwing to present protective tendencies and inter-state mistrust and envy,'' the realization of such a union was a question of the far distant future. ``This opinion,'' he added, `ìs also shared . . . by our trading classes.''244 The British journal The Economist similarly dismissed the idea of a European commercial union as ``peculiarly absurd and impossible.'' It added: How are you to de®ne `Èuropean'' interests? Take the coal mines and iron 241

242 243

244

On the central European commercial treaty system, see Francke, ``Zollpolitische Einigungsbestrebungen in Mitteleuropa waÈhrend des letzten Jahrzehnts,'' 195±206; Werner Sombart, ``Die Neuen HandelsvertraÈge, Insbesondere Deutschlands,'' Jahrbuch fuÈr Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich 16 (Leipzig, 1892), 215±279. See Henry Farnam, ``German Tariff Policy, Past and Present,'' 29±30. Schmoller, ``Die Wandlungen in der europaÈischen Handelspolitik des 19. Jahrhunderts,'' 381; see also Francke, ``Zollpolitische Einigungsbestrebungen in Mitteleuropa waÈhrend des letzten Jahrzehnts,'' 194. Fisk, ``Continental Opinion Regarding a Proposed Middle European Tariff-Union,'' 40±41.


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furnaces in North-Eastern France and those over the border in Germany. They are rivals to one another all over the world just as truly as either is a rival of the coal and iron industries of Pennsylvania. The French ironmaster, to say the least, is no more likely to ally himself with the German against the American than with the American against the German. Why should he? Does competition wear a less serious aspect when just over the border than when it acts three thousand miles over the sea? We should say, rather, that it becomes more keen and intense, especially when it is in¯amed by old national feuds.245

Europe remained divided. European countries now resorted to selfhelp measures to deal with the `Àmerican menace.'' Many increased their tariff barriers and began to discriminate against American products. France increased protection considerably with its Meline Tariff. The Tariff also instituted minimum and maximum schedules. The maximum schedule applied, notably, to the United States whose McKinley Tariff hurt the bulk of French exports, namely luxury goods such as wines, silks, china, gloves, woolens, and works of art. Most European countries secured the minimum schedule. The preferred rates of the minimum schedule were eventually extended in whole or in part to Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Egypt, and Japan ± all countries with which the United States desired closer commercial relations. Canada and Argentina, whose agricultural products competed with American exports in the French market, also received the minimum schedule.246 Germany followed France in the direction of discriminatory trade practices and increased protection against the United States by raising tariffs and passing stringent patent laws. Taking advantage of Europe's division, however, Americans managed to overcome the new barriers with ease. Rather than unilaterally lowering its own duties and adopting an unconditional interpretation of the Most-Favored-Nation clause, the United States obtained concessions by pursuing an active bilateral trade strategy. This was rendered possible with the reinstatement of reciprocity as an instrument of export expansion in the Dingley Tariff Act of 1897. Kasson, the special reciprocity commissioner of President McKinley, negotiated four treaties with European countries. An agreement was reached with France in 1898 whereby concessions authorized by the Dingley Tariff Act were granted in return for the French minimum rates on various goods.247 In 1900 Germany granted minimum rates to the United States which were similar to those conceded earlier to some of its neighbors. Two more 245 246 247

`Èurope and America,'' The Economist 58 (December 29, 1900), 1855. Lake, Power, Protection and Free Trade, p. 122; see also Ashley, Modern Tariff History, pp. 331±346. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, pp. 352±354.

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reciprocity agreements were negotiated, with Portugal in 1899 and Italy in 1900. They all accomplished the same objective: to penetrate the walls of tariff protection that were rising in Europe against products from overseas. In the end, there was no sign of abatement of American business in Europe. Europe had failed to put itself on a par with the United States. Instead of a Union capable of confronting the `Àmerican menace,'' Europeans preferred the comfort of the old routine: division, delusion, and mutual distrust.248 248

In his preface to a book by Edmond TheÂry entitled Europe et Etats-Unis d'AmeÂrique (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1899), Marcel Dubois contrasts the experience of the United States of America with the ``spectacle lamentable des Ètats-DeÂsunis' d'Europe'' (pitiable spectacle of the ``Disunited States'' of Europe), p. 12, my italics.

7. Mattli, Walter - The Logic of Regional Integration Europe Beyond, Cap. 4

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